by Rich Hawkins
He crawled out from under the van, scraping his palms, and watched the street as he rose into a crouch. Then he stood with his back to the side of the van. The cold breeze touched his neck. The street appeared deserted. Silent houses and gardens. A flock of birds shot overhead and filled the sky for a moment, hundreds of frail-boned dark bodies moving as one organism. He envied their freedom, envied their flight.
The birds faded into the distance. They were the first animals he’d seen since arriving here. What had happened to the cats and dogs?
In the silence he started down the street, hurrying back to see his friends.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Something scratched against the front door.
Ralph and Joel looked at each other. Ralph gestured for him to stay put and then stepped into the hallway. He had locked the door after Frank had gone off to be a white knight.
More scratching. Slow and lethargic. Weak.
His fingers tightened around the knife handle. He hesitated, feeling like a little boy who was scared because a stranger was at the door, before stepping forward, his trainers padding softly on the carpet. Joel was behind him, eyes wide and alarmed. He was about to speak but Ralph shushed him with a raised hand and looked through the spy-hole in the door.
“What’s out there?” Joel whispered.
From what he could see there was nobody behind the door, unless the visitor was less than five feet tall or a child. His mind created an image of some grinning pygmy-creature waiting for him. Or maybe the visitor couldn’t be seen because it had crawled here and was now lying at the doorstep, crippled and bleeding. Maybe it was Frank, and he was badly injured.
Ralph breathed out. He kept his eye to the hole, sensing Joel’s apprehension behind him, radiating like heat.
“Ralph?”
He crouched and opened the letterbox, looking left and right, listening for the sound of breathing or movement. He closed the letterbox and stood.
“It might be Frank,” said Joel.
“It might not be.”
Joel raised his voice. “Frank, are you out there?”
The door shuddered on its hinges as something crashed against it. Ralph stumbled to the foot of the stairway, scrambling up several steps on his back. Joel retreated down the hallway towards the kitchen.
Another crash shook the door, but the bolt held. A moment later there was the sharp crack of wood splintering. The door was beginning to buckle under the force of repeated impacts.
“Oh God,” Joel said. “Oh, Jesus Christ.”
Breathing quickly through his mouth, Ralph tried to compose himself and fight the urge to run. He raised his knife and got ready for a fight. “Come on, you fucker.”
Then the attack stopped and there was silence.
“I think it’s gone,” whispered Joel.
“I hope so.”
“I think I’ve pissed myself a bit.”
Ralph stared at the door. The echo of violence hung in the air.
Joel was creeping forward, when Magnus appeared in the living room doorway. He yelped and took a step back.
“Magnus, you’re awake.”
Magnus’s voice was barely audible as he looked at the front door. “They want us to let them in. We shouldn’t let them in.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Ralph closed the curtains and then peered between them through the living room window. Darkness shrouded the street. Whatever had crashed against the front door was out there, maybe watching the house and thinking of other ways to gain entry.
They had barricaded the front and back doors with furniture: tables and chairs, the sofa and armchairs, and a Welsh dresser decorated with china cups hanging on little hooks.
He turned away from the window. With the curtains closed the room was dark, but Joel had found two candles under the sink and lit them with Magnus’s cigarette lighter. The small flickering flames made shadows cavort like oily wraiths. Ralph and Joel had a torch each, switched off to save the batteries. Magnus and Joel were sitting on the carpet, across from each other. Joel eyed Magnus unsurely, as if he were a stranger. He was holding a bread knife from the kitchen.
Magnus was without a weapon. Ralph made sure of that.
“I felt weird,” said Magnus. “Like something was in my head trying to push its way out of my brain. It drained all of my energy.”
“Your nose was bleeding as well,” Joel said.
“I know. I feel better now.”
Ralph stood with his back against the wall. “What was wrong with you?”
Magnus didn’t look at him. “How should I know?”
“Do you know who was banging at the door?”
“I don’t know who it was. I only knew they wanted to come in and see us.” He scratched under his jaw. “Ever since I saw that weird thing in the sky early Sunday morning, I’ve been feeling strange. I just thought it was an extended hangover, but it got worse when we arrived in the village.”
“What about Frank?” said Joel. “Should we search for him or wait here?”
Ralph rubbed his eyes. “It was his choice to go out there. He should’ve listened to me and stayed.”
“We can’t leave him out there.”
“You want to go out there?” Ralph’s voice had risen. “Our phones don’t work, so it’s not as if we can give him a quick call to see if he’s okay, is it?
Joel looked away.
“Maybe something got him,” said Magnus.
Ralph hated the silence that followed. He thought of Frank out there in the dark and immediately despised himself for letting Frank go alone.
Magnus added, “Whoever came to the door knows we’re here so maybe we should leave, find another place to hide.”
“I’m not going out there,” said Joel. He pressed at the keypad on his phone, but the screen remained blank and useless. He dropped it onto his lap.
Magnus eyed Ralph. “What do you think?”
Ralph said nothing and moved back to the window to look out at the thick darkness beyond.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The woman emerged from the shadows beneath a dead streetlight, lurched towards Frank, and stopped a few yards before him in the middle of the road.
He halted, and went to offer her a hand, but then thought better of it when he saw her close up.
She was hunched over and naked, with sagging breasts that were little more than flaps of skin. Her hair was falling out. The puncture wound on her neck had scabbed over with encrusted filth.
A grin twisted the fleshy lips on her slack face. Drooping eyes bright with fever centred upon Frank. She sniffed the air.
Frank grasped for his inhaler in his pocket but found nothing and began to panic, his chest tightening.
The woman’s body began to buckle and dance, limbs flailing, her fingers clawing at the air. She raised her head towards the sky, her mouth open with a silent scream from the darkness of her throat.
The blood drained from Frank’s face. His heart stuck in his gullet. He couldn’t take his eyes away from her.
Bones clicked and joints popped wetly. Something changed in her face, and the skin stretched tighter over her cheekbones. She held out her hands and the fingers upon them lengthened.
She stared at Frank and let out a screech that wasn’t a human sound. Her breath came in shivering fits.
Frank stepped back.
She came for him.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
They were sitting on the floor in the living room.
“I need a piss,” said Magnus.
Ralph shrugged. “You don’t need my permission.”
“Is the toilet upstairs?”
“Yeah. Knock yourself out.”
Magnus looked unsure.
“Scared of the dark? Piss in the kitchen sink if you have to.”
“That’s disgusting,” said Joel.
Ralph let out a short, tired laugh. “Just go upstairs. You’ll be fine. The bad things are outside, not in here.”
Ma
gnus swallowed and fought back a shiver as a draught passed through the room.
Ralph handed Joel’s torch to him. “Have a good one.”
Magnus rose, switched on the torch and went out into the hallway. He checked the barricaded front door then stood at the foot of the stairway. He pointed the torch up the stairs, staring at the shadows created by the invading light, and put his free hand on the bannister. His bladder felt tight and swollen. He noticed the beige carpet, darkened with grime over the years, beneath his feet and around him.
He thought of Debbie and the boys. A check of his mobile showed no signal and only a few hours left in the battery.
“I’m sorry, Debbie,” he whispered, staring at the phone.
Something creaked upstairs. It had sounded like the shifting and shrinking of floorboards. He shook his head. The muscles in his face were stiff and the blood quickened in his veins.
Magnus whirled and bit down on a gasp when a hand fell upon his shoulder.
Ralph looked at him, frowning.
“You scared the shit out of me.”
“Sorry.” Ralph held up his hands. “I’ll wait here for you, mate.”
Magnus nodded. “Cheers.”
“I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
“Same here.”
Magnus started up the stairs, where beyond the wooden hill the darkness waited for him and seemed to thicken in anticipation.
*
Magnus took a piss, exhaling with relief, and when he was finished, he closed the toilet lid and sat down upon it. Looked at his trembling hands. He thought of the thing he’d seen in the sky. The thing – the presence – had touched him, he was sure of it.
He took off his glasses, rubbed his tired eyes and squeezed them shut. When he opened them, white spots danced in his vision. He exhaled through gritted teeth and stared at the floor until his vision cleared.
The bathroom was a neat small space, with the faint smell of bleach in the air.
Magnus walked to the sink. A child’s toothbrush in a glass jar. Wisps of hair around the plughole. He squirted liquid soap on to his palms and rubbed his hands together then rinsed away the lather. As he dried his hands on a towel, he stared at himself in the mirror above the sink. The reflection of a dead-eyed man with narrow shoulders and a glass jaw. A ghost. Shadows pooled under his eyes. Every wrinkle and crease in his face was starkly visible in the torchlight. The stress of being married to Debbie, of her constant demands and insecurities, was ageing him. His bones felt frail and brittle, yet his limbs felt heavy, as if they were full of water.
“Getting old,” he muttered.
He used to play football for the village team each week, along with Frank and Joel; Ralph was too lazy to play football so he just watched from the touchline, shouting abuse at the opposition team. They had been young men back then. Before his sons were born. Before Debbie’s ‘condition’ had fully infested her mind.
Good old days, he thought. Nostalgia was like a drug. And he almost laughed, but then remembered Frank was out there and they should be searching for him.
The ceiling creaked. He looked up and heard something like a faint footfall above him, followed by a scrape of movement, and more creaking, moving away from him. He pointed the torch at the ceiling, following the footfalls out of the bathroom and onto the landing.
The footfalls stopped above him, next to the closed attic hatch. The wooden cover on the hatch shifted minutely. Magnus thought his heart might stop. The torchlight trembled upon the ceiling, where a thin line of darkness appeared at one edge of the hatch. The smell of dust and neglect came to him, and the undeniable sense he was being watched, scrutinised, maybe even evaluated as a threat; or even worse, something to be hunted and chased.
The dark line widened. The hatch cover moved. He saw a glint of gleaming eyes and a face that was mostly bone and sallow skin.
Magnus turned and stumbled down the stairs, almost crashing into Ralph in the hallway.
Ralph held him by the shoulders. “What’s wrong?”
“Something in the attic. We didn’t check the attic.”
“What’s wrong?” Joel asked from the living room.
A soft thud on the landing caused them to look up the stairs.
“We woke someone up,” said Magnus.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The woman bolted after Frank, her ragged panting loud in his ears, draining the strength from his body. She sounded hungry. He didn’t look back.
It was almost full dark. He ran past empty gardens and silent houses as his legs throbbed and screamed. His chest grew tighter as he went. Fear and adrenaline were a chemical mixture clouding his mind.
The woman screamed. He felt her hot breath on the back of his neck. He stumbled and tripped on a patch of uneven road, falling onto his back. A second later the woman scrambled onto him, eager and wheezing, and he held the crowbar under her jaw to stop her from snapping her head forwards. Her mouth opened to show dull ivory teeth. Rancid breath. Her tongue was like a worm feeling for somewhere to burrow. She radiated a terrible heat as she straddled him.
“Fuck off!” Frank cried.
When the woman tried to claw at his eyes, he hit her in the face with the crowbar. She fell back. Frank scrambled away from her and stood, shifting awkwardly on his feet like an amateur fighter. Each breath he took was an effort.
The woman was on her knees. She hissed at him through broken teeth. Her nose was smashed and broken, blood dribbling into her mouth and down her chin. Frank hadn’t meant to hit her that hard. He felt guilt and shame for hurting a woman.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She tried to get up, juddering and rasping.
“Please stop,” Frank said in a pleading tone. “This can end now. It doesn’t have to be like this. You need medical attention.”
She ignored him.
“Please stay down. Stay back.”
The woman stood. She opened her mouth, her jaws clicking. Her face was monstrous in the growing dark. She took a step towards him, a great tension building in her body. A low growl trembled in her throat.
Frank retreated two steps. “Don’t come any closer. I’ve already warned you. I don’t want to hurt you.”
She lurched forward, arms outstretched. And it happened so quickly. All he could see was her bloodied face leering towards him before hit her again with the crowbar.
She collapsed at his feet, the back of her skull hitting the tarmac with a dull crack. Blood pooled from underneath her head.
The world went askew. Gravity pressed down on Frank’s shoulders. A sense of surrealism washed over him.
The woman wasn’t moving. Her eyes remained open.
“I didn’t mean to hurt you; it was an accident. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He covered his mouth with one hand. His eyes stung with tears as he muttered and cursed under his breath, shaking his head slowly until the cold air bit at his face and he regained his senses.
The street was coming alive with the sounds of choking breaths and damp wheezing. Crawling shapes and scurrying forms emerged from their dark holes and silent places. Hungry things with pallid skin and sharp mouths sniffed the air to inhale the smell of warm flesh.
They saw Frank.
He ran.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ralph halted on the penultimate step and shone his torch onto the dark landing. The attic hatch was open. He breathed slowly and quietly. Magnus tensed behind him, holding a brass poker, while Joel waited at the foot of the stairs.
Steeling himself, Ralph stepped upon the landing. The open hatch gaped above him.
Magnus pointed at the door to one of the bedrooms, which seemed to be the boy’s judging by the posters of superheroes upon the visible wall. It was open just enough for someone to slip through.
“What?” Ralph said.
“That door was closed before I came downstairs.”
Ralph placed his hand on the door. He smiled weakly at the Spider-Man poster. Spider-Man was his favouri
te superhero as a kid. He pushed the door open and aimed his torch into the room. Magnus did the same. Both men paused in the doorway, looking around. Shrek wallpaper. Posters of footballers. Action figures scattered on a desk below a shelf full of comics and books.
Only one thing was different.
“Oh shit,” said Magnus.
There was a huddled shape on the bed, underneath the Star Wars duvet cover. The shape was trembling in the torchlight.
Ralph and Magnus looked at each other then stepped into the room. They approached the bed. Ralph’s heart tried to climb his throat. The shape under the duvet jerked, as if hit by a spasm, and the two men froze. Ralph motioned for Magnus to pull back the duvet so he would be ready with the knife if there was something dangerous underneath.
Magnus reached for the duvet and gently took hold of it between a thumb and forefinger.
Ralph raised his knife.
Magnus pulled back the covers to reveal a little boy lying on the bed, shivering in the torchlight. His skin was almost transparent. He wore only a white vest and underpants. His dark eyes, wide and bleeding, stared up at the men.
Magnus stepped back, his face quivering. “Look at him. Fucking hell.”
Ralph couldn’t speak. He ran the torch beam over the boy’s bony limbs and narrow chest.
The boy opened his mouth, giving a wheezy sigh, and a pale fluid spooled past his lips. He had the look of disease. Ralph thought about black-and-white photos of inmates rescued from Nazi death camps at the end of World War Two. This boy could have stepped out from any of those old photos.
“What’s wrong with him?” said Magnus, as if Ralph would know the answer. “What happened to him?”
“I wish I knew.”
“I think his parents left him here. Poor little bastard.”
The boy’s breathing faltered. His eyes glazed over, fixing onto Ralph until what little light had resided there was gone. His chest wasn’t moving.