by Fred Crawley
Nathan got to his feet and went to the other door. At the back of the house, there was a living room and he was pretty sure that the few times he’d been in it he’d seen an old yellow telephone by one of the sofas.
As he approached the room, he began to calm down. A part of him hoped that this was a delusion and he hadn’t felt that way before. He could hear a tinny whisper coming from behind the door at the end of the corridor and he wondered if someone was in there watching television. But surely they would have come to help him when he started shouting if they were.
Nathan pushed open the door. Without realising it, he had passed through the smoke and the air was completely clear. Maybe he had imagined the smoke, just like he had imagined walking in and finding Aaron slumped over the table in some kind of alcohol-induced coma.
He saw the television first. An archaic black box in front of the French windows, some daytime home makeover show flashing away with the volume turned down. Then he saw the telephone and he went to that without even bothering to look around the room. He picked up the receiver and dialled.
“999, what’s your emergency?” said a female voice.
Nathan opened his mouth to respond but then he looked at the rest of the room. He hadn’t seen them when he’d first come in because he’d been too concerned with getting to the telephone while there still might be a chance to save Aaron.
Bella and Sophie were laying on the floor in their night clothes. Their limbs were twisted awkwardly around one another as if they had been cuddling, but they were wrong. He could see blood on both of their faces. Richard and Alex were on the two chairs but hanging off them limply. Nathan didn’t need to feel for their pulses to know that all four of them were dead.
“Hello?” said the voice on the other end of the phone. She sounded concerned. “Hello, sir we’re tracing the call. If you can’t speak just stay on the line and we’ll send someone to you.”
Nathan put the phone down. He could just imagine what the police would think if they came here and found him in a house full of dead bodies.
He crept towards Bella and Sophie. He expected them to jump up and start laughing, telling him that it was all a big joke and that he was an idiot for falling for it. They didn’t move and he began to wish that they would wake up and start taking the piss out of him for being so gullible.
Nathan stood above them. It looked as if Bella had been dropped on top of Sophie. They were both covered in cuts and bruises as if they had been fighting. Their necks were twisted at odd angles leaving little doubt in his mind about how they had died.
Suddenly he turned to the door: Aaron, Richard, Alex, Bella and Sophie. Five of his housemates were accounted for, but that still left David and Libby. They might be somewhere upstairs, still asleep and completely unaware about what had happened.
Nathan left the room and didn’t go back into the kitchen. The smoke was drifting along the corridor towards him but fading as it did. He walked to the back stairs and up to the second floor where both David and Libby’s rooms were.
David’s door had been smashed in. The wood around the lock was splintered. Nathan knew what he would find when he went in, but he had to check anyway. If there was still a chance, if he was alive and needed help...
He pushed open the door. It didn’t creek. The room was dark because the curtains were still closed. It was bigger than his room. The bed was unmade, the sheets piled in the middle, but David wasn’t there.
Nathan turned towards the window and saw him. He was leaning back in a chair, a laptop computer open on the desk in front of him. A half-finished CV on the screen. He walked towards the chair and touched the fake leather head rest. It turned towards him and David’s vacant expression told him everything he needed to know.
He tried to close the door behind him when he left, but it swung open again. He leaned against the wall and tried to catch his breath. He didn’t think that the shock had really hit him yet, but it was coming. Outside he heard a siren and he knew that the operator had been able to trace his call and send police. More sirens followed and before he started walking again, he began to hear knocking on the front door.
Nathan needed to get out of the house. Based on his recent dealings with the police they would arrest him on sight and he didn’t want to spend another twenty-four hours in a cell. But he couldn’t go yet, he needed to check one last room first.
He started to walk along the corridor. His legs felt unsteady and weak. He could hear someone at the door, shouting now, but he didn’t stop or reconsider his plan.
Libby’s door was closed which offered him a fleeting moment of hope. When he tried the handle he found it wasn’t locked. He pushed the door open.
They weren’t supposed to drink or smoke in the house but her room smelled like an ashtray and the first thing he noticed was the smouldering ashes overflowing a glass bowl.
“Libby?” Nathan said. He looked around the room, but he didn’t see her at first. He crept inside just as he heard what sounded like a battering ram attacking the front door downstairs.
She was on the floor, twisted into a shape that was barely human.
He reached for the light switch.
There was more blood here than he had seen in the rest of the house. He hoped that she had put up a good fight but if she had it hadn’t been good enough. Her head was facing the door while the rest of her was turned the other way. Her throat bulged as if something had been lodged inside it.
Nathan felt sick and he had to look away. He was only distantly aware that the police were in the house now. He could hear them muttering to one another - probably wondering if this was all a waste of their time.
He took a final longing look at Libby. She hadn’t deserved this. None of them had deserved it. Nathan turned away. He crept out of the room and heard the police officers enter the kitchen and discover the first body.
“Jesus!”
“Oh, fucking hell!”
More people entered the house and uttered a string of shocked expletives. Nathan crept along the corridor towards the front stairs, hoping that the police would follow his route through the house and discover the bodies in the living room before they came upstairs.
A seemingly unending number of police officers were coming into the house. He could hear their heavy boots resounding on the floorboards and echoing up the stairs. He pressed his back against the wall and waited.
“What’s upstairs?” said a woman. Nathan thought he recognised her as Detective Flores, but there was so much going on that he couldn’t be sure.
“In here first,” said a man.
Nathan breathed a silent sigh of relief.
He waited and a minute passed since the last person had come through the front door. He still didn’t know if it was safe to go down the stairs. There might be some of them still waiting in the hallway or others about to leave.
It wasn’t until he heard more shocked swearing as they found the bodies in the living room and then footsteps on the back stairs that he realised he had run out of time.
“If he’s in here I’ll kill him myself!” said man.
“Rick, you don’t know he did this,” said the woman.
Nathan started to climb down the stairs. It seemed as if every nerve in his body had become super sensitive. The warm air made him shiver.
He focused on each step he took. Made sure that he walked at the edges of the steps to minimalise the amount of noise he made. He didn’t think that any of the steps creaked, but he wasn’t sure and now wasn’t the time to find out that he was wrong.
It was dark in the hallway. The bright morning light didn’t penetrate far into the house. He stopped on the bottom step and peered around the corner. Dying tendrils of smoke crept beneath the door which was almost closed. In the other direction, he could see down to the street.
Upstairs the police had found David’s body. One more to go, then would they check his room? He hadn’t, but he knew he was alive. What if there was something there that
linked him to all of this?
Nathan shook his head. That was impossible because he hadn’t done anything. He knew who had, but he couldn’t think about that now. There was no room for anything in his mind except getting out of the house. When he was somewhere safe (was anywhere?) he could think about what he was going to do next.
He took the final step down to the hallway. He felt vulnerable. There might be more police outside or more on their way. He walked to the door as quickly as his shaky legs would allow.
There were six police cars parked in the road facing the house. They had completely blocked the traffic, but there were no angry drivers in sight. There was only one ambulance, but no doubt more would be on the way. He couldn’t see anybody in uniform watching the house, although there were plenty of twitching curtains.
He couldn’t do anything about the neighbours. If the police asked them, they would say that they had seen him sneaking out. A few of them probably wouldn’t even wait to be asked. He closed the door quietly behind him and hurried down the steps.
When he got down to the street, he turned left without giving his destination much thought. He didn’t really have anywhere to go but ‘away’ seemed like a good aim. He turned as many corners as he could, hiding himself in the back streets of the city. As long as he kept moving he didn’t have to think about where he was going nor what had happened.
CHAPTER 17
THE DIRTY BLANKET DID LITTLE TO DISGUISE HIM, but he thought that few people from his old life would recognise him now. Nathan sat hunched at the end of the alleyway while the world rushed by in an indistinct blur. Voices and traffic and music mixed together so that he couldn’t tell one from another.
He was hungry and he was cold, but he was so used to both that they barely registered anymore. The ground was hard and he was starting to sober up. He’d missed his chance to sleep, again.
There was a McDonald’s across the street. He watched the seemingly endless parade of people walking in and a few minutes later walking out, holding brown paper bags and paper cups. The sun had barely risen, but the high street was already busy with people rushing to and from work.
To his left, he heard the metal grind of shutters being opened. Another day was beginning and he would soon be moved on. He had come to find sanctuary in the daylight, surrounded by people. The ghouls couldn’t get him when there were others around.
Nathan didn’t wait for the shop owner to come out and start shouting at him. He picked up his bag and stood. His legs were tired and stiff. A sleeping bag hung from straps beneath his rucksack, it looked as if he was going camping, but no one would mistake him for a holiday maker. He was dirty and smelled of alcohol.
He walked slowly through the street. A woman in high heels and a short grey skirt crossed the road so that she didn’t have to walk past him. That was fine with Nathan. He didn’t want people to see him.
He walked towards the train station. There would be more security there, and he wouldn’t be able to stay for long, but he might make enough money to buy something to eat.
The places where he could earn money changed with the time of day and day of the week. Monday’s were bad in general, but Friday’s were always good. People in groups tended to be less generous than those on their own. At one point, he’d made a sign but the effort to stop and read something seemed to put people off. He found that the best tactic was to sit quietly with his head down so people didn’t feel put off by having to make eye contact with him.
He could still smell the food from the restaurants that had closed just a couple of hours earlier when the last of the late night drinkers had finally left. There was a white Styrofoam box face down on the pavement outside a shop which was still closed. Men and women in shiny shoes walked past, giving it as little attention as they gave him.
Nathan lowered himself carefully to the floor and picked up the box. It was heavy enough to contain food. He slid his hand underneath and felt the cold dampness of something. He picked it up.
Chips. Cold, moist chips, but chips all the same. He barely noticed the disgusted looks that were thrown in his direction as men and women who were more fortunate than himself suddenly saw him for the first time.
He carried the box to a shop doorway and sat down. There were bits of gravel in the ketchup, but he didn’t have to eat that. He picked off the top layer and dropped them on the ground where they landed with a splat. Then he shovelled the rest into his mouth before he had a chance to change his mind.
They tasted terrible and he had to force himself to swallow. It would keep him going for a few hours though and by that time he would hopefully have enough loose change to buy himself something hot.
Nathan stood up again as the crowd of business people began to thin. There would now be a lull before the first shoppers arrived. They were a better crowd than the business people. The best people were women his mother’s age. Perhaps they saw their own sons looking back from his dirty face.
He stopped at the bottom of the stairs adjacent to the station. He had a blanket in his bag and a few pieces of cardboard. If he tucked himself around the corner and got lucky, he might be able to stay there for a few hours before someone from the station tried to move him on. He leaned against the wall and put his head back, closed his eyes and wondered for the thousandth time how he had managed to get himself into this situation.
The police were looking for him now, not only in connection to Gwen’s disappearance but also the murders of his house mates. It had been in all the papers, even the national ones. They called it a massacre. He had expected that he would be caught but being homeless had proven to be a better disguise than he ever could have hoped for.
He thought that his bank account had probably been frozen, but he hadn’t dared go to a cash point to find out. He’d seen enough police shows on television (usually snuggled under a blanket with Gwen) to know that they would be able to trace the location of the machine he used. He had thrown his wallet and everything that could identify him into the river and hoped that, if they found it, they would think he had killed himself. He’d been keeping a close eye on the newspapers, but he’d not heard it mentioned so, as far as he knew, everything identifying him as Nathan Custer was currently sitting at the bottom of the Thames.
An old woman with a trolley walked towards the stairs. She looked as if she was having some trouble as she hobbled along and instinctively Nathan got to his feet to go and help her. She stopped and then he stopped. The look of fear in her eyes reminded him what he looked like, what he was now.
He raised a hand and then sat down. He looked in the other direction until she had reached the stairs and then watched her struggle to climb them because she was too afraid to accept his help.
He took a book out of his bag but didn’t open it. The old woman would probably go to the first guard she found and tell them about the scary man sitting under the bridge. He felt like a troll.
Nathan sighed. He couldn’t afford to draw any attention to himself. He would have to move on.
He repacked his bag but didn’t go up the stairs. They were probably already on their way down to him and he’d had enough ‘it’s time to move on’ conversations for a life time. There was no point in arguing about it because they were right. He had an idea that you could still be arrested for vagrancy and he didn’t want to end up in a prison cell where all they would have to do was check his finger prints to find out who he was.
The path led around the back of the station. There was too much noise to identify individual trains arriving and departing, but he heard shrill whistles and shouting. The shops in this part of the city were new and seemed to have been built specifically to stop homeless people setting up camp. There were no alleyways and even the benches had armrests so that you couldn’t lay down on them and sleep.
He passed a line of newly planted trees and expensive coffee shops. He remembered going into places like that as if it was a dream. The idea of spending three pounds on a cup of coffee seemed ridiculo
us now. He could feed himself with that sort of money.
His stomach groaned and he put a hand to it. He didn’t feel as if he was going to be sick, but the old chips had settled badly. At some point, he was going to need to sneak into a shop and use the bathroom.
Past the freshly minted coffee shops, there was an older part of the city. The sudden expansion of the railway station had put a lot of the shops there out of business and if he hadn’t been concerned about where his next meal was coming from he might have been able to stop there and get some rest. He doubted there were many people who would complain about him curling up in front of a building that hadn’t opened its doors for a year.
He kept going up the hill, past a trendy looking bar, through a narrow alleyway and back onto the high street where the early morning shoppers had begun to emerge like bears from hibernation. They clutched paper cups of expensive coffee and talked in hurried little voices that Nathan found it easiest to ignore. They didn’t seem to notice him at all.
It was just after nine o’clock but he had nowhere to go. He wandered up and down the high street, trying to ignore the looks of disgust thrown his way by the few people who noticed him. He was an outcast, but that was what he wanted. As long as people ignored him he was safe, at least from the police.
He settled down opposite a baguette shop that was clearing out the last of its breakfast rush. He leaned against the wall of another closed shop and stared at his feet. He needed to sleep if he was going to be any use that evening, but before he could sleep he needed to get enough money to keep him alive.
“Excuse me?”
Nathan looked up. He saw a dark haired woman with a long pale face. She looked at him and his first thought was that she owned one of the shops nearby and was about to ask him to move on.
“Yeah?” Nathan said.
She had green eyes and a slim neck. He guessed that she was about a foot taller than Gwen until he looked down and saw her black heels which must have added an extra six inches. She looked as if she was in a hurry.