by Lex Sinclair
With his mind made up, he drew the curtains closed.
When he read the time on the alarm clock he was visibly taken aback – 10:13pm
*
When he awoke at ten to eight the next morning, Frank waited for Sammy to go to the bathroom before leaping out of bed and rushing to the window. He braced himself for the worst and parted the curtains.
The rain had eased and morning sunshine gleamed off the wet surface. His mind and body were gratefully soaked in relief when his eyes registered that no one was standing outside his home staring at him.
I very much doubt he was standing there four nearly five hours watching the house, even if he did have a few marbles missing. He’d have to be bloody stupid to be standing there all that time. Probably lives around here, went for a walk and realised he was going to get caught in the rain.
But not even that sounded right in his mind. It still didn’t make sense.
Frank shook his head, confused and weary. Well it’s not worth thinking about now, is it? He’s gone, that’s what matters. Whatever concerns were troubling you have gone with the man himself.
Frank was convinced of that if nothing else.
But being convinced and knowing for a fact are two separate things…
8.
REV PERKINS arrived at his sister, Nadine’s home later that afternoon. He had the misfortune to catch the grisly news story concerning thirteen young girls who’d committed suicide in Newcastle for apparently no comprehensible reason. Thereafter, he’d listened to a Kings of Leon CD.
He parked the car outside the house beneath the overhanging boughs of a huge spruce, shading the pavement. The first thing he noticed as he got out was the air perfumed by sweet jasmine. Red, coral and deep purple bougainvilleas spread a wonderful miasma of blossoming colours throughout the well-maintained garden, bursting with life, contrary to the overpowering palpable sense of melancholy inside.
He didn’t know quite what to expect when he arrived at the Moretz family home, although nothing had prepared him for the washed-out appearance that disguised his sister when she answered the door.
‘Come in,’ Nadine said in a lacklustre tone.
Perkins hefted his suitcase up over the threshold and entered his sister’s home. He followed her down the short hall to the living room. She slumped down on the sofa and appeared to shrink within herself. Perkins found it hard to see his sister this way. Evidently, she wasn’t going to be over the moon to see him under the circumstances, but the melancholy and grief in the silence crowded out everything else. Adorning the living room walls were portraits and family pictures. Larry and Nadine on their honeymoon in Paris and Larry and Nadine cutting the cake on their wedding. The pictures of them both smiling and overjoyed had to feel like a dagger in the heart, seeing them in the last week, Perkins thought. It also made Larry’s untimely passing to feel like it was imaginary or a mistake.
Sighing, he lowered himself on the armchair and felt something jutting out from the cushion. When he looked he saw it was an old yellow-paged paperback.
‘It’s – was – Larry’s,’ Nadine said. ‘Put it on the table if it’s in the way.’
‘No. It’s fine.’ Perkins exhaled and wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans. ‘It started spitting to rain as I was driving up here,’ he said, by way of conversation.
Nadine didn’t respond.
‘I’m considering giving up the church,’ he said, although he wasn’t sure why.
Nadine nodded, as though she expected him to say it.
Was she even listening?
‘You know you don’t have to be here,’ she said.
Perkins was taken aback by that comment. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘You’re not really my brother. You’re adopted. You’re under no obligation to be here. You’ve got two weeks of annual leave. Do you really want to spend it with a pregnant woman in mourning? Doesn’t sound like much of a break from your work, does it? Especially if you’re thinking of leaving the church.’
Perkins slid his suitcase so that it was leaning against the side of the armchair and out of the way. Then he looked closer at his sister. ‘I’m not your biological brother, Nadine, no. I am– unless you tell me otherwise – your brother. I chose to be here for you in your time of suffering… and for Larry. He was always nice to me. I don’t know if that’s ’cause he felt sorry ’cause I am an orphan or that was his nature. Maybe both. The real question is – do you want me to be here?’
Nadine’s red-rimmed eyes were dry of tears as she nodded, chin tucked into her chest. ‘I’m so scared,’ she said in frail voice. ‘I’m so scared…’
‘You’re not alone. Remember that, Nadine.’
Nadine shook her head. ‘That’s not what I’m afraid of. Well, I am. But Mum and Dad are more than willing to help out with the baby and have helped make arrangements for the funeral next week.’
‘What are you so scared of then?’
‘Larry is gone. Nothing will ever bring him back. And God and all that, I can’t say I have the strength never mind the faith to believe. Be fair – how can I?’
Perkins gave her a look of empathy.
‘Just when I thought Larry and I were going to finally get some joy in our lives, fate strikes another lightning bolt through my heart. And I don’t think when you die good people go to Heaven and bad people go to Hell. That’s just something nice to think to make people feel better about the subject of death.
‘And I’m not afraid of that, either. In fact going back to how it was before I was born seems more and more like a reward from all this agony.
‘What frightens me is that now my unborn child and I are at risk.’
Perkins rested his elbows on his knees as he leaned forward. ‘Sis, I can assure you that you and your baby are going to be all right. As you’ve said you got Mum, Dad, me. You got lots of friends from school and college, all of which are close to home. I’m only a two-hour drive away. Or an email or phone call. You just need to sleep and try to eat something and know that that’s what Larry would’ve wanted. He wouldn’t want you to be ill or your child to be ill. I can’t answer for God. I’ll be perfectly honest its things like what’s happened to Larry that I sometimes think God is the one who needs a good talking to. Probably why I’m losing my faith. But sod God for the moment and think of yourself and your baby, let me do the worrying.’
Nadine shifted in her seat on the sofa. ‘I have been sleeping, Anthony. It’s my dreams that I am so scared of…’ She let what she said hang in the air.
Perkins felt the living room shrink around him until it seemed as though he were talking to Nadine in a bomb shelter.
‘Shall I tell you my dream?’ Nadine said in a voice unlike her own.
Not able to answer verbally, Perkins kept his gaze on Nadine, a solemn expression masking his feature making him appear older than he actually was.
‘In my dream I found myself walking through the thickest blankets of swirling fog the likes of which no one has ever been seen. It coiled around me, writhing in a serpentine fashion. That’s all there was for a long time. Then I saw, in the far distance, something else. I hurried through the fog, pushing the blankets of grey out of my way until finally I squinted and saw it clearly. Amidst the endless fog was a luminous green light, pulsing like a cursor on a screen. I knew then that the light was the source of the fog. And the only way out of the endless fog was for me to keep running, faster now, towards the neon light, dazzling, blinding me the closer I got, until there was nothing else, save the light.
‘Then I found myself standing on a desolate street where Larry’s burgundy-red Vauxhall had careered into the tailgate of a pickup truck that had smashed the windscreen. The car had been saved from going further into the rear of the truck by the bollard on the pavement.
‘Floating rather than walking, I grew closer to the scene of the accident and saw the pale, horrified face of my late husband. He was bleeding internally before his death. You could see where the capi
llaries burst and traces of veins surfacing on his skin. The seat belt choked him and kept him pinned to the seat.
‘But all those injuries hadn’t been what cost him his life! Larry was a young, fit man. Something else caused his heart attack besides the injuries sustained in the collision. I knew that already, I think. That’s why when the police came to the house and said what the medical examiner said it didn’t make an iota of sense. My intuition knew something else. The bulging eyes and gaping jaw weren’t caused by his heart or any other kind of seizure brought on by a collision.
‘That’s when I saw the large scrape across the road, from one pavement to the next. Then I heard the ear-piercing scraping. You know the kind when a teacher runs her long fingernails over the blackboard to get their students’ attention. It was like that only much higher-pitched.
‘From around the side of the street where the Pakistani family own and live above their corner shop the noise preceded this towering figure that wasn’t a man or animal. The object causing the grating sound was his scythe being dragged across the concrete. It was so bad I had to clap my hands tightly over my ears, and even then the din whistled down my ears making me wince.
‘Then it stopped abruptly. When I opened my eyes again I recoiled because the face of the towering figure couldn’t be seen in the vast darkness of the hood. The cloak wasn’t anything I’d seen anyone else wearing even for a Halloween party. And for some reason I couldn’t move my gaze any lower than past the cloak. It stood before me, and although it had no face that I could see or no eyes I knew without clarification that it was observing me with intent. I could feel it, the way some people know they are going to die shortly before they die.
‘It raised an arm that was almost the same height as my entire body and a skeletal finger jutted from the sleeve. It pointed towards the accident, and it was then I knew what had caused Larry’s heart attack.
‘Then the dark figure turned back to me and pointed with that same gnarled, ancient finger at my stomach and raised its scythe, showing me the curved, razor-sharp blade and pretended to run its blade across my womb, inches away from actually doing it.
‘I started crying then. And when this darkest of figures reached out to me with its skeletal hand and filled my vision I was certain I was going to die.
‘Then I woke up…’
As soon as he’d heard the description of the Grim Reaper Perkins felt the volcanic grasp seizing his thudding heart, threatening to burst it into a river of molten lava.
‘What’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost?’ Nadine said, searching his eyes.
‘S-Sorry,’ he stammered. ‘Just found it disturbing, that’s all.’
‘What d’you think it means?’
‘I don’t know…’
Perkins couldn’t fathom how his sister was enduring the same visionary dreams as he had. Also, he couldn’t rationalise why he didn’t confide in Nadine regarding what he’d dreamt. This wasn’t coincidental. This meant something, but for the life of him he couldn’t begin to guess what. However, the presence of Death and the fact that Larry had died while driving in an unpredicted fog were signs that suggested a sinister presence.
‘Seriously, what are you thinking about?
His sister’s voice came to him as though a whisper reverberating down a tunnel. ‘No one is gonna get your baby,’ he said in a husky voice. Once he’d cleared his throat he added: ‘What happened to Larry was just the shittiest kinda luck anyone could ever have. I can’t help wondering though, why he didn’t wait for the fog to disperse.’
‘According to his friends in The Crown, the fog did ease off,’ Nadine said. ‘He must’ve been rushing home to be with me. I told him not to.’
‘It’s not your fault before you start blaming yourself. I won’t say everything’s gonna be all right, ’cause it’ll never be right again. But your baby needs you now more than ever. Now how ’bout a hug?’
Nadine offered a meek smile and held her brother, and wept…
9.
THE MAN IN THE RAINCOAT who had been watching the house of the Death’s chosen one, moved through the alleyways, instinctively knowing where he was going without paying any heed. The rain had eased and sometime before midnight he’d left his position by the streetlight and headed back where he’d come.
His shoes click, clacked on the concrete, loud in the alleyway. The towering buildings on either side concealed any light from the streets getting in. Dark shadows reigned supreme in the hollow backstreet, and nothing more. A fitful wind harried small funnels of discarded litter along the rutted surface.
Tonight, however, the man in the raincoat walking briskly and heard the sounds of hastened scuffling somewhere in the bowels of the night. He halted and stood motionless, ears prickling, trying to pick any minute sounds that would give away the predator’s exact position.
Raucous laughter disturbed the dark alley and shattered the silence.
The man in the raincoat moved forward then stopped again.
‘What the fuck was that?’ one male voice asked, startled.
‘Fuck should I know.’
‘You’re the one with the torch, man.’
A cone of yellow radiant light pierced the alley and passed the man in the raincoat’s face.
‘Whoa, shit!’
‘Hey, man. What the fuck ya doing standing there, like Michael Myers?’
The man in the raincoat, sodden from the downpour earlier, remained motionless and silent.
‘You got shit in your ears or what?’ the one with the torch barked, strutting towards him with a confident swagger. He shone the torchlight directly into the man’s face and involuntarily quivered at the sight. For the man in the raincoat had shiny, scarlet eyes and didn’t wince at having the unnatural light pointed at him, as anyone else would.
The other man who only appeared in the background as a silhouette approached the scene playing out in the heart of the alley, where water dripped and plopped into puddles from exterior drainage pipes. ‘Who the fuck is this guy, man?’
‘He’s no one,’ the one with the torch said. ‘Just some deadbeat who’s gonna get his arse kicked if he doesn’t start talking real soon.’
‘What’s with his eyes? Looks like Freddy Kruger’s worst nightmare.’
‘Contact lenses. This one thinks he’s hard, love him.’ Then the one pointing the beam of the torch turned to the unmoving man and said, ‘You got five seconds to either turn around and go back to whatever shit-hole you crawled out of or you’re gonna be having your next meal fed to you in a hospital.’
His friend brayed laughter.
Then the man in the raincoat laughed too.
‘Oh, you think that’s funny, do you?’ the one with the torch asked. ‘Yeah, gonna be real fuckin’ funny when you’re sucking my dick.’
His friend, gripping his sides, turned away, stumbling over a cardboard box and fell down on his arse, unable to control the fit of mirth overwhelming him.
‘Adam,’ the man in the raincoat said, getting Adam’s attention in a heartbeat. ‘Why would you want me to suck your dick when Josh was doing it before I was passing by? Surely you don’t think that you ought to be rewarded with two blow jobs on this night, do you? To say that you and Josh are talkin’ bollocks wouldn’t be an insult but a matter-of-fact. So, please, be a good little poof and continue as you were and allow me to pass. That’s not a question, Adam. That’s sound advice. One way or the other, I will be getting past very shortly whether you permit me or not.’
The beam of the torch had momentarily dropped and illuminated the puddle black surface of the alley before Adam could find it in him to raise his arm and point it at the man in the raincoat. ‘How…? Who the hell are you?’
‘That’s up to you and Josh,’ the man in the raincoat said in an unwavering voice. ‘I can be a man passing you two while you were gobbling one another, or I can be the beginning of the end of you.’
Adam’s arm started shaking uncontrollably. Th
e torch made flickering effect on the man’s lined, rugged face. The man in the raincoat waited no further and rested his hand on Adam’s hitching chest and pushed him gently to one side and walked past. Then he stopped and looked over his shoulder, his features concealed in the dark shadows.
‘Oh, by the way, Adam – your mother already suspects you of being gay. She doesn’t mind but wishes you stop doing drugs in your room. She found a stash of weed in the top drawer of your bureau. I’d get rid of it before someone else finds out and grasses you to the police.’
And with that Adam and Josh watched in amazement as the steam billowing out of the vents in the bricked walls swallowed the man in the raincoat completely.
*
The man in the raincoat got to the end of the alley, descended the three steps to an unmarked scabby blue door and rapped on the metal. Five seconds later the peephole opened at head height and from the dimness within someone scrutinised the caller.
‘Who calls at this hour?’ the gravelly voice of an elderly person asked.
‘Number 3,’ the man in the raincoat said.
From the other side of the door bolts were retracted, locks were undone and the latch was taken off its hook before the big, rusty door opened outward.
The man known as Number 3 stepped back, allowing the door to open, then entered the closed-in corridor that reeked of damp and was covered in cracks and fissures running up the walls, branching off into other cracks.
Number 3 led the way down the short, cramped corridor to the black, timber door and knocked upon entering.
The room beyond the threshold was bare, save the oak desk, three leather upholstery chairs and Persian rug. Four gooseneck bedside lights were positioned around the room in each corner. On the oak desktop two candles burned, flickering amorphous shadows across the crumbling walls.