Reaping the Dark

by Gary McMahon

  They must be no older than nine or ten years of age. They should be at school instead of learning their lessons out here on the street.

  Clarke trudges up the driveway, past Oakes’ big SUV, glancing at the shining paintwork. He feels the gaze of neighbors upon him; around here, everybody keeps an eye out for each other, but for the most part they keep out of one another’s business.

  Oakes opens the door as he approaches it. He must have seen Clarke coming—perhaps he’d even watched his exchange with the street kids, laughing silently from an upstairs window.

  “I’ve been expecting you,” says the big man, and he turns around and plods back inside the house, his bulk eaten up by shadows as he vanishes into the big old Victorian property.

  Clarke follows him in and shuts the door behind him. The air inside the house is cool; Oakes suffers from the heat, even during the cold season, and always keeps the windows open. He turns left at the end of the hallway and enters the main reception room.

  Oakes is sitting on the battered leather sofa, his body filling the space like it has always belonged there, part of the furniture. He is holding a crooked spliff in one hand, his other hand rests on the arm of the chair, the big, scarred knuckles prominent. “That was quite the fuckup last night, wasn’t it?”

  Clarke sighs. He sits down in a chair opposite the other man. Oakes is a big unit, like an urban bear. His long hair is pulled back into a slick ponytail and his face is almost lost in a welter of gray beard.

  “I know,” says Clarke.

  Oakes passes him the joint and he takes a quick hit, and then passes it back. He has to remain focused. This is no time to kick back and get stoned.

  Oakes leans forward and rests the cigarette on the side of a pottery ashtray. “I remember when I found you, stealing cars and dodging the police.” Oakes’ voice is deep and somber. He often speaks in non sequiturs, strange beats and partial stories. “I recognized right away that you had the talent. You knew how to drive a car better than anyone I ever met, even back then. You were a star in the making.”

  Clarke waits. He’s known Oakes long enough to realize that it’s unwise to interrupt him, especially when he’s reminiscing.

  “I used to think that one day I’d have a life, just like other people—real people. Now the most I can hope for is a quiet, dignified death.” He picks up the joint and leans back on the sofa, sitting there like some kind of king or sage, surrounded by his books and his memories.

  “I have to go,” says Clarke, trying to get the conversation back on track. “They were killed. All but one of them. I have the money.”

  “Don’t tell me anything,” says Oakes, blowing white smoke between his thin, hairy lips. “I don’t need to know.”

  “I guess I just wanted to say…good-bye. I wanted to thank you for everything you’ve done.”

  Oakes stares at him, his small blue eyes moist in the dimness. It could be caused by the smoke, or he might be holding back emotion. Clarke can’t tell. He can never tell, not with a man like Oakes. “Remember the code?” He leans forward again. “Never buy anything that you can’t afford to leave behind. Just go. Get the fuck out, while you still have legs to run with.”

  “What about McKenzie? He’ll be looking for me.”

  Oakes nods.

  “Has he contacted you?”

  Oakes nods again.

  “What did he want to know? What did you tell him?”

  Oakes raises a hand and wafts away the smoke. “He wanted to know your real name, where you lived. I told him to fuck off. That isn’t how I operate.”

  It’s Clarke’s turn to nod. “He’ll come for you, too.”

  Oakes stands and crosses the room. He bends down, reaching into a corner, and straightens up with a sawn-off shotgun in his hands. “I know he will.” He carries the shotgun back over to the sofa and sits down, balancing the weapon across his knees.

  “Come with us?” Clarke knows what the answer will be, but he asks the question anyway. He has to try. He owes this man his life, and it’s time to repay the debt. There always comes a time like this, when accounts are tallied up and friends are owed. Clarke knows this; it’s another part of the code, one that’s rarely spoken of.

  “Everything’s rented, man. Love, life, sex…the lot of it. We don’t own anything, not really. It’s all temporary.” He breaks the gun across his knee and removes the shells, inspecting them, running his broad fingers across their bright red casing. “I know how to handle McKenzie when he comes a-calling. Some men break, others are already broken and all you have to do is look for the cracks. McKenzie; he’s the second kind. He’s a walking piece of damage, and I can see his sweet spot a mile off. I’ll be okay. It’s too late for me to run away. I have all that I ever needed right here—and that’s that.” He smiles grimly. His teeth are yellow, stained from the tobacco habit he’s supported since he was eleven years old.

  “You sure, man?” Clarke stands, moves across to the sofa. He stands over Oakes, as if confused.

  “Yeah. It’s fine. I’ll make it so he can’t follow you. I won’t kill him—not that. I don’t fancy pulling that kind of prison time, not at my age. I’ll just take his kneecaps.” The sound as he snaps the shotgun back together is loud, like a premonition of the shots it might fire in the future. “Give my love to Martha. Tell her she’s the one who has to watch out for you now.”

  “She’s pregnant.” The words just spill out. He didn’t mean to say them; he never wanted to tell Oakes like this.

  Oakes nods. “Good. Remember the code?” He shakes his head. “Well…that’s all bullshit now, because from here on in the baby owns you. That’s a whole new kind of code.”

  Clarke stares at his friend, waiting.

  “McKenzie isn’t your real problem here. You need to start worrying about the people you stole the money from.” He pauses, breathes heavily. “Have you ever heard of a group calling themselves The Order of the Darkened Veil?”

  “No…” Clarke hesitates. “Well, not until this morning, when they were mentioned on the news.”

  Clarke shuffles forward again, folding one large hand over the other. “That’s right. The building from last night used to be their temple. It was the place they held their meetings. That was years ago, during the Victorian era. But back in the seventies they reformed—like an old rock act who can’t stop touring.” He smiles; his eyes are looking towards something that isn’t even in the room, perhaps out of sight to anyone but him. “McKenzie is a psycho, but these people are something altogether more dangerous. They’re men with a mission. That’s all I can say…look them up, read about the old Order. These new guys—they’re even worse than their forebears.”

  Clarke reaches down and shakes Oakes’ hand. His palm is cold, like reptile skin. He keeps hold of the hand for as long as he can, relishing for a moment the rare physical contact. This might be the last time he ever touches his old friend, the man who took him in and trained him when he was just a scruffy little street punk with a talent for driving. He knows enough about life to sense that this is a pivotal moment, a moment around which his world will shift.

  “Be seeing you,” says Oakes, and he pulls his hand away.

  Clarke leaves without saying another word.

  When he arrives back at the Lexus, he is just in time to see one of the kids taking off the valve cap in preparation to let air out of the tire. He walks up slowly and purposefully behind the boy. His two friends run away in silence, not even warning their comrade that they’ve been caught.

  “Stupid little shit.” Clarke reaches down and grabs the boy by the hood of his sweatshirt. The boy lets out a small yelp, like that of a yappy dog. Clarke hauls him on his knees across the tarmac and onto the footpath. “You’ll never learn, will you? Rather than make money, you cause damage. That kind of attitude will get you nowhere in life.”

  The kid is grinning—he is apparently over the shock of being manhandled. “Fucker,” he says, spitting out the word. He pulls a knife f
rom his sweatshirt pocket. The blade is short but it looks sharp: a stabbing rather than a slashing weapon.

  Clarke shakes his head. “Damn fool,” he says, and then he kicks the boy in the side of the head. The kid goes over, falling onto his right side. The knife goes clattering across the concrete paving stones. The kid tries to get up, sprawling like a drunk, but Clarke bends over and gives him a short, hard, straight punch to the nose. It feels like he’s hitting his younger self.

  The kid falls down again. This time he doesn’t get back up. Blood flows from his broken nose. He’s crying. Clarke is impressed that he’s still conscious.

  He recalls that Oakes had beaten him the first time they met. Clarke had been trying to steal the older man’s car, and ended up with a broken rib and lots of cuts and bruises. He’d also been given a chance in life—a chance to do something different, something better than what he’d been doing before.

  “Tough little bastard,” he says, and walks away, unlocks the car, climbs in behind the wheel. He drives away without looking back. Maybe today the kid has learned something; hopefully a life lesson has been given, and the boy will think more clearly about the path that stretches ahead of him.

  He knows that Martha is gone before he even pulls up outside the apartment building. He’s already tried to summon her on the phone from the road, but there was no answer.

  There is a sense of something missing, a gap that before had been filled. He sits behind the wheel and stares up at the window, wondering how he could have been so stupid. Why the hell was he so eager to visit Oakes and tie up loose ends, when all he should have been doing was driving somewhere, with his family in the backseat?

  He lowers his head so that the cold leather of the steering wheel presses against his forehead. How could he have been so unthinking when he’s usually so careful? Was it the thought of keeping all that money, and the promise of Hollywood that clouded his thoughts and made him clumsy?

  And how the hell did they get to him so fast?

  Oakes might have remained silent as he’d claimed, but there are other ways to find out information. The shell-like identity of Driver Z has been around long enough that other people might suspect who he really is. He has been careful, but you can never be careful enough. He knows that; has always known it. Rumor can kill. Hearsay can destroy. He should have taken all of this into account.

  He gets out of the car, leaving it parked at the curb, and enters the apartment building. The stairwell echoes with his footsteps as he climbs to his floor. He doesn’t want to use the elevator: it’s far too enclosed, and with no escape routes should things get tricky.

  His internal gears shift, climbing through a sequence: first, second, third, fourth…top gear. He’s running on rocket fuel. He is jet-propelled. He stands outside the front door of his apartment and listens. No sounds come from inside. The door is shut but he suspects the lock has been jimmied. These new buildings are easy to access if you have the right tools. He’s always been afraid of such a thing happening.

  He reaches out and gently pushes down the door handle. The door opens; the splintered frame is evidence that he’s correct and somebody has forced entry.

  Shit.

  That means McKenzie not only knows where he lives, he knows who he is.

  When Clarke runs in top gear, he possesses the ability to shut down his emotions. He does it all the time when he drives. He becomes an extension of the machine, another part of the car. Afterwards, whenever he thinks about this unconscious process—especially in the cold, dark hours before dawn when he is sometimes unable to sleep—it scares him that he is capable becoming something less than human at times like these.

  It makes him afraid of whatever lives inside him. Afraid of himself.

  He pushes on, moving deeper into the apartment. There’s no mess; the place is neat and tidy. A suitcase stands in the entrance hall beside the bedroom door, where Martha has left it. She must have packed quickly and efficiently, in the same methodical way that she does most things.

  He closes his eyes. When he opens them again, the suitcase is still there, the rooms remain empty. He moves through into the kitchen and sees the note immediately, as he is meant to do. The piece of paper is tacked to the fridge door with a short length of tape.

  COME ALONE.

  DO NOT COME EARLY.

  DO NOT COME LATE.

  YOU KNOW WHERE AND WHEN.

  That’s all; nothing more. No direct threats, no subtle warnings. It’s all laid out as simply and unambiguously as possible. There’s no need to elaborate, everything is understood. This is business, not personal, and to involve anyone else would be madness. The thought of calling the police barely even enters Clarke’s head, except as an ironic afterthought. People like him, who lead the kind of lives that he does, have no use for the police. They are the enemy. They have their own jobs to do, and part of his job is to keep out of their reach.

  He takes a few steps across the room and stands before the note. The handwriting is surprisingly neat: upper case, and printed rather than scrawled.

  On impulse, he turns around and looks at the wall directly opposite the fridge door. The lack of threat in the letter is now even more disturbing. There is a hunting knife stuck in the plaster wall, two inches of blade shoved deep into the structure. Wrapped around the blade and part of the handle is a hank of blonde hair.

  It’s all the threat he requires.

  Clarke doesn’t keep guns in the house but he knows who does. This will be the second time today that he’s visited Oakes, and it renders their big good-bye anticlimactic. It’s more than he’s seen of the man in the past six months—their relationship these days is conducted mainly by phone or email.

  He thumbs the buttons on his mobile as he drives, but Oakes isn’t answering. Either he doesn’t want to speak to Clarke or he can’t. Both of these options are unappealing. He doesn’t even get through to a recorded message, just a single droning electronic tone that could mean anything.

  He makes it back to Oakes’ place in twelve minutes; it’s the fastest he’s ever done the journey. He locks the car and jogs to the front door. The kids from before are nowhere to be seen. Perhaps they went to school. Maybe they’re robbing a corner shop. The door is open wide to the wall. Whoever has been here didn’t see the necessity of concealing the evidence of their visit. Maybe it’s another sign, a signal: I’ve been here, too; I can go anywhere you can.

  Whoever it was—and surely it was McKenzie—must have been right behind him all along. Their paths just missed crossing by a fraction. Life, Clarke knows, is made up of such fine margins.

  He walks straight to the front room, but it’s empty. There are signs of a struggle: an upended table, some books knocked to the floor, a rocking chair tipped over on its side.

  He moves through the house, muscles tensed, hands bunched into fists, and enters the kitchen. In the entrance to the small glazed conservatory at the back of the house, where large windows look out onto Oakes’ massive garden, there is a smear of blood. Red handprints on the door frame.

  Clarke pauses a moment and then walks over, through the doors, entering the conservatory.

  Oakes is lying on the floor in a ragged pool of blood. He’s naked and lying on his back. His right arm is pointing straight up, as if it were pointing at the garden when he died, and his left arm is crooked at the elbow and wrapped around the handle of the shotgun. Carved into his chest and stomach are a lot of designs that Clarke doesn’t recognize: strange symbols or decals, cut deeply into layers of skin and muscle, paring the flesh away almost to the bone.

  And there’s something else, this detail even more horrific than the lacerations.

  Oakes’ face is gone.

  In its place is just a mass of red, raw tissue with a goatee-like patch of gray beard at the chin. Somebody has taken off his face with a knife—possibly a similar hunting knife to the one stuck in Clarke’s kitchen wall.

  Clarke drops to his knees. Oakes has been shot twice: once
in the chest, directly between his nipples, and once in the throat. Small caliber. Deadly precision. It occurs to Clarke that his mentor might have still been alive when his face was removed, then finished off with the second bullet afterwards.

  Clarke grabs hold of one of Oakes’ hands. It’s still cold, just like the last time. He bites down on his emotions, shifting up through the gears. He’s a machine; there’s a job to be done, and he is designed for a specific role. None of this madness applies to him—he’s just the driver.

  Clarke looks up at the patio windows, realizing he’s missed something. He couldn’t see it before because of the angle, but now that he’s changed position he can see it just fine. Oakes’ face is stuck to the glass, sections of flesh facing inward. The empty eyeholes stare at him. The ragged outline—messily cleaved from bone and fitted together roughly against the pane—is like some kind of grisly jigsaw. Drawn in blood around the messy rendition of features is a crude five-pointed star: a pentagram. He recognizes this symbol only because he’s seen it before, in movies. This is the stuff of Hammer horrors; he could not be taking it seriously if there wasn’t so much blood, and the grim reality of the body of his friend and savior a foot away on the floor.

  He looks back down, stares at Oakes’ chest, his hand…anywhere but the sad ruin of bloodied bone where his face should be.

  He doesn’t dwell there long, at the side of his fallen comrade. The guns are upstairs, in a storage box under the bed. He moves fast, glancing at his watch—the day is well over half done. Time moves quickly when you’re dodging bullets.

  The bedroom is large and airy. The windows are open, letting in a chill draft. Clarke kneels down at the side of the bed, reaches underneath, and slides out the strongbox. It’s unlocked; Oakes always keeps it that way for easy access. He pulls out a small revolver, checks that it’s loaded, and slips it into his jacket pocket. He takes nothing else. This is all he needs.