by TJ Park
Cutter spoke.
What he said came out silent. More than that. It not only lacked sound, it gorged on what small sound remained of the swiftly dimming world, the twilight chatter of insects, the breeze-blown rustle of grasses and leaves. All of it was siphoned from the air as if Cutter’s appearance had opened up a vacuum.
What Cutter said could only be discerned by studying the movement of his mouth. He kept it short and sweet. One word, composed of two hard syllables. A name.
A familiar one.
Doug recognised it in his nerve endings before he knew it consciously. It was the name he would have been preoccupied with all day if he wasn’t so distracted by shadows.
Seeing a dead Cutter use it shook him.
The message conveyed, Cutter vanished in a blink of an eye that needed another blink to clear it.
Alone again, the familiar waited. It waited for Doug to grasp the significance of what its handler had said. What he meant by it.
When Doug did, his eyes widening in shock, the familiar leapt.
He pulled the trigger convulsively, once. The sound of the shot fell flat in the crowding dark, the flash of the muzzle scratching a senseless image in his eyes.
Before he could recover, the familiar swept past, back the way Doug had come. It never slowed, never deviated from the course it was taking, a straighter line than Doug took. It would never tire, either. Doug knew that first-hand. It would be back at the place where he had started from that morning in a short matter of hours.
The name Cutter spoke. It was definitely for Doug’s benefit.
Cutter liked his victims to suffer.
Doug ran blunderingly after the swiftly disappearing familiar, already left far behind, firing shots at it over and over, the clicking of a trigger on an empty clip no different to him than firing live rounds. The shots were swallowed up indifferently by the landscape. There was nothing to show he had hit anything at all in the failing light.
Even after the familiar was gone from sight, Doug kept running and pulling the useless trigger until he fell down, plummeting into a dark deeper than anything night could offer.
Doug picked himself out of the dirt. He had fainted briefly, from exhaustion, perhaps from lack of oxygen. It was still dusk, though, fading fast. Perhaps he had only been shooting at phantoms. The familiar was gone, as if it had never been. He could truly believe it was only a hallucination he’d suffered, brought on by terrible fatigue. See? When he scuffed out a pawprint in the dirt the size of a dinner plate it stayed gone.
He swung round, not sure of his direction any more, trying to locate the house again, and was unsuccessful. It had got too dark.
Chapter Eighteen
Janet made sure the back door was locked, and finding that it was, opened it again to have another look outside. It was the same as before. Night. Black. She shut the door again, locked it, jiggled the handle to be sure, berating herself for becoming a compulsive-obsessive. If she didn’t get a grip, she’d find herself checking the front door again as well, as she’d already done a hundred times before.
Earlier in the evening she’d arranged a kerosene lantern and several candles around the kitchenette, intending to see the room lit up as brightly as possible. But that didn’t help. It only announced night more thoroughly, rather than vanquish it; dark battered at the windows. She thought her bogeyman fears were over and done, but they returned with the night.
A rising whistle made her jump, despite being a noise she was steeled for. She turned off the kettle, ghostly steam surging from the spout, whistle winding down. The kettle’s thinning cry was like hearing a living thing expire.
“Mum?” Lauren called anxiously from the bedroom.
“It’s only me, Lauren.”
“Mum?” More distraught.
For a joke, the kids had called the workers’ cottage “Danny’s cubbyhouse”. As dwellings went, it was modest, and so basic the laundry couldn’t fit inside. The washtubs were set under an outdoor alcove. The kitchenette was the largest room and accommodated a table for eating. The other rooms were the bedroom, a utilitarian bathroom and a long, pinched living room, all connected by a narrow hallway.
Janet had treated the belongings in the place with care. She did not like disturbing Danny’s things. Though he was an employee, he had been with them for years and was considered a close family friend. She wanted to believe he was coming back to reclaim his stuff, though all signs indicated otherwise. She felt mean, not yet bothering to take his loss into consideration. She was too occupied with mourning for her husband, her fears for Scott, the mounting impatience she felt toward her daughter.
“Mum!”
She rushed into the bedroom to find Lauren sitting up in a mound of blankets on the floor next to the double bed where Scott slept. Seeing he hadn’t moved from where she last left him, Janet turned him over, worried about bedsores and pinched nerves.
Lauren was showing the dazed look of someone just woken. She had slept straight through sundown, and Janet guessed she’d been disoriented by falling asleep during the day and coming to at night.
“You okay?”
“I didn’t know where you were.”
“I’m here.” Though, strictly speaking, Janet didn’t feel truly present. She kept a closed door on any wayward emotions, especially around her children.
“You’re not going anywhere, are you?” Lauren insisted.
“No.”
“You won’t go outside?”
Janet almost had to laugh.
“I won’t be going out any time before morning. Not until help arrives.”
“Will it?” she asked wanly.
All day Lauren intimated they’d been deserted, cut off from any hope of rescue. It was an idea Janet could do without. She was already unsettled by her own freewheeling anxieties.
“Someone will be here soon,” she assured her daughter. “I can feel it.”
Except she felt no such thing. She did not believe they would be rescued any time before morning. A long night would have to be endured first.
“I’m making a cup of tea for myself. Would you like one?”
Lauren nodded, not looking at her mother, but at the dark outside the window. Then she looked at the huddled shape on the bed, clearly uneasy.
Janet experienced a flash of outright anger toward her daughter. During the day, when Lauren insisted on accompanying her, she thought nothing of it. It was simply a matter of not wanting mum out of sight. But when Lauren had opted for a chair in the living room over sleeping in the bedroom, Janet finally cottoned on. Lauren didn’t want to be left alone with her brother. He unsettled her. After an argument, Janet was nearly forced to barricade her daughter in the bedroom in order to keep her there.
“I’ll bring the tea in,” Janet said. “We can all sit together.”
Lauren looked anxiously at her brother again. “Be quick.”
“Sure,” Janet replied, her irritation beginning to swell again.
When she returned to the kitchenette she found the room darker, two of the candles snuffed out, trailing curls of smoke. The remainder of the candles were not far behind, guttering on the verge of going out. She hastened to close off the draft, the open back door. She got halfway to it before she stopped, her body suddenly colder than the breeze coming in, the breeze entering through a door she knew very well should be shut. Shut and locked.
***
Doug looked up to adjust his line. Darker degrees of night had eventually erased the landscape, until he was walking blind, relying on a guess to guide his path to the house.
He wondered if there was any point in reaching the place, anyway, since he had seen no lights coming on as dark arrived. But he knew that was the coward in him trying to convince the rest to give up and lie down.
He was so tired after his galvanising confrontation with the familiar. When his boots began pushing dirt along, he faltered, and swayed on the spot. Mistake. He overbalanced and crashed back into a sitting position. H
e wanted to lie down, but knew he would fall asleep if he did. He made a compromise, staying slumped in a sitting position to doze. Just for a short while, then he’d head off again, promise.
As soon as he swayed and jerked awake – once, then twice – he knew he should get to his feet. When he tried, he accidentally fell onto his back, and it was easier to stay flat and argue with himself that he should get up, rather than actually move.
He looked up at the stars beginning to come out. Then they were going away again, switching off, the dark becoming total.
He realised he’d closed his eyes.
In the darkness Janet’s face swam up before him.
He got up with as much force as if someone had shoved him from behind. But there was no-one riding his back. Not literally. “Alright, Alright, I’m going,” he muttered. “Damn woman,” he said more quietly, so she wouldn’t hear him.
It wasn’t much of a difference whether his eyes were open or closed. Her face floated ahead of him, just out of reach, making his legs keep after her. Though her face was pleasant to look at, it always carried that slight, judgemental frown. Even when she smiled; she probably wasn’t aware. As much as it annoyed him, he wanted to keep it that way. He could not imagine her face in terror … or worse.
Her face drifted away into the dark. He kept moving, hoping to catch up with it again. For the longest time he shuffled mindlessly along, asleep on his feet, skirting scrub on automatic pilot, stopping only because he ran into the fence.
He bounced off the wires. Then stared at them stupidly.
Only a partial fence, to support some fruit vines. If it hadn’t been there, he would have walked straight past the house. The witches’ house.
It remained dark, no lights on, but Doug could not shake the feeling someone was waiting up for him.
As he went around the fence, he became briefly anxious, thinking he had the wrong place. Then he recognised the too-large chimney, the vegetable patch nearby. It was only that the house presented an unfamiliar angle to him. For all the death and mayhem wrought there, he had not been at the place very long.
Ducking away from the windows, he went round to the front. There he put a nervous foot on the step to the porch.
“Hello?”
He had called out much too softly. No point in doing it if he didn’t want to be heard. The house responded with a soft tinkling of wind chimes, a light creak of the porch swing. Yes, he remembered those. This was definitely the place.
He was suddenly unsure about committing to a confrontation. He did a poor tiptoe across the porch – his injured legs weren’t up for it – and reached for the doorknob. It was locked. Naturally. Why should this be any easier than the rest?
He summoned up the last of his strength, raised his foot high and kicked the door. The result was astonishing. He was launched off the unmoved door, arms flailing. He would have fallen off the porch if not for the railing.
The magnitude of his weakened state dismayed him. Then he chuckled tiredly. After all he’d been through, he wasn’t about to be baulked by one locked door. Not the master criminal that he was. He charged it with his shoulder.
The lock popped open easily – perhaps it was the angle – and Doug was dumped on the floor inside. On some pillows.
It was another moment before the stench of death enveloped him, rooting out his nose, his senses. When his face and hands came away stickily from the soft padding he was resting against he lurched hurriedly to his feet.
He would have fled the house – if the door hadn’t swung shut behind him first.
***
Janet regarded the open back door with dread. For a hideously long time she dithered in place, undecided. Leaving the door open for a quick escape would be an invitation to whoever might be outside; locking it might mean shutting someone in with them.
She went to the door, closing and locking it, then withdrawing a gun from the pocket of her oversized jacket. It had belonged to one of Doug’s crew. She had picked it up out of the rubble during the day, thinking she would feel safer. But right now it didn’t feel right sitting in her hand. She didn’t trust it. She returned it to her pocket, feeling its weight settle against her stomach.
There was movement in the corner of her eye. Only a wisp of wafting steam from the water just boiled. She picked up the full kettle and held it out as a weapon, planning to check on her children and then search the rest of the cottage. She was concentrating so hard on not letting it slop over onto her hand, she nearly collided with the man standing in the hall.
It was Danny’s place. He had his own key.
She backed away stiffly, eyes bugging from her head at what she saw. She sucked in breath to scream, but it went down the wrong way and she coughed and spluttered instead. The fit returned a small measure of sanity. She’d need that and more to stop the kettle from spilling.
Would flinging the kettle in Danny’s face achieve anything? In his state, would he notice? She set it down behind her on the counter, eyes never leaving him.
“Just came in to get my coat, missus.”
She stifled a scream at the sound of his voice. That he could still talk …
“You didn’t … you didn’t disturb Lauren and Scott, did you, Danny?”
Whether deliberate or not, he was between her and her children.
Danny drew his shoulders up and let them drop in something like a shrug. It was more like he was adjusting a heavy pack, as if he carried a weight there that troubled him greatly. But why notice such a thing? It was so trivial when conversing with a man so obviously dead.
“Danny? Did you go into the bedroom?”
He smiled good-naturedly. What remained of his teeth were stark against his cooked skin and bloated, purple lips. A sun-bleached mess of brown hair fell into an unblinking eye and stuck there.
“I keep my clothes on the couch. Lauren’s always ragging on me about it.”
Then Janet remembered she was wearing Danny’s coat. Her gorge rose.
“I’m so sorry, Danny.”
It was meant as much for what had been done to him as for using his coat without permission. She began to remove it. Danny put out a hand to stay her.
“No, you keep it. It’s not so bad in here. Funny bloody weather …”
She didn’t stop. She did not wish to wear anything that belonged to him.
“I’m fine,” he insisted.
“No, take it, Danny.” She hurried it off, draping it over a kitchen chair so she would not have to touch him. Her eyes brimmed with tears.
Seeing his objections had upset her, Danny relented, taking the coat and putting it on. She looked away as it snagged on a bone protruding through his shirt. After some wrestling, he hooked the garment over his shoulders. Yet he still could not hitch it up properly, as if something was in the way. Something on his back.
“Danny?”
He was not paying attention. He was being pulled sideways in a tilt, taking slow, shuffling steps, perhaps going with whatever drift his mind was taking. Janet could not imagine what thoughts might be going through the broken crockery that was his head.
He rapped his temple on a wall cabinet and the sudden contact brought him back. He focused on her again, the look on his face achingly familiar, a real Danny expression. It said: “Bloody hell! What a dope I am.”
It struck her then he might not be a cover for something else. Maybe the real Danny was still at hand, fighting whatever was trying to take him over. Maybe she could appeal to him. Convince him not to do whatever riding his back wanted him to.
She wondered if he himself was trying to figure out what was going on. Did he know or even suspect his condition? Or was he in denial and wanted reassurance that everything was alright? Would seeing his reflection help him understand, cause him to lie down and be at rest? Or would he react badly?
She tried to figure out how to proceed. She could only be direct.
“Danny, tell me … what do you want?”
It was at that momen
t Lauren chose to emerge from the bedroom. It nearly destroyed Janet to see her smile.
Danny must have looked normal from behind, the jacket and his tousled hair hiding the worst of his disfigurement. Lauren’s mood immediately lifted, skipping to Danny almost happily, relieved, beaming through impending tears.
“Bozo … where you been?”
Janet could only watch as Lauren’s joy disintegrated into horror.
“Hey, kitten,” Danny said, turning. “Broken any hearts lately?”
Lauren clasped her hands to her mouth, eyes stark above them. Yet she behaved more admirably than Janet could expect. No scream. And she did not turn and run.
Still, Janet needed to act before Danny tried giving her a tickle.
“Danny,” she said loudly, “do you want a cuppa?”
Danny swung back to Janet like a busted marionette.
“Only if you’re making one yourself,” he said.
Janet picked up the kettle from the counter to show him she was in the middle of doing just that. She looked past him. “Lauren?”
Lauren ignored her. She was staring at the back of Danny’s head.
“Lauren!”
She tore her wretched gaze from Danny, but kept one eye there, bracing for the moment he might turn and face her again.
“Lauren, could you please wake Scott while I’m making Danny a cuppa? I need the two of you to go to the main house and grab a few things for me. And don’t muck about. I’ll be right behind you.” She gave Lauren a pointed look. “You understand?”
Lauren’s hands, hooked into claws, began to pull mindlessly at her face.
“You understand, Lauren?”
Lauren gave a jerking nod, then turned on her heel and fled.
Janet backed around the kitchen table, setting it firmly between her and Danny.
“How do you like your tea, Danny?”
“Same as always, missus,” Danny said, with his familiar slow smile – except most of his jaw was missing. “Black. Black as midnight.”