by Adam Nevill
Luke flinched. Jerked to the side. Then his breath seized up inside him when he felt the opening of himself like wet pastry across his hip bone. A long sting followed the parting of his flesh under the gown. There was a hot flash down one thigh, and when he looked he was all red and drippy to the knee. He gouted, he gushed.
Fenris grinned, swivelled the knife about in his hand so it daggered down from his fist. Luke looked into the boy’s hard blue eyes and felt too angry to breathe. He had not wanted this and because of his decency he would have to die in a dirty kitchen. ‘Cunt,’ he said, and spit came out of his mouth. It made Fenris blink. Then the boy’s skinny tattooed arm was up in the air and coming down at him fast.
Luke walked under his elbow. Caught the girlish wrist in one hand, like he’d plucked a cricket ball whizzing through the air at second slip, and he had the ball in his hand before anyone had seen the actual catch. He punched his other hand up and into the skinny boy, blade out. His fist came to a stop as his thumb and knuckle indented the boy’s flat stomach, and then he stepped away.
Fenris gasped. Looked down himself in surprise. Then screwed up his smeared face like he was going to cry, like he was so disappointed who something was over, or that he had been cheated.
Luke went for the gun. Around him all he could hear was Fenris’s cries and his own breath, which was loud and hot and wet all over his own face. He was dizzy at the sight of the blood. It was all over his own leg, and coming out slippery between Fenris’s long scarlet fingers where he clutched them at his soggy side.
The gun was heavy. Ungainly. Luke heaved it up and into his arms and nearly dropped it. His hands were shaking too much to hold it steady, or to get his finger inside the trigger guard.
Fenris howled. His face was fury and grief and panic now. The old woman looked on from her little wooden box, impassive, as if strangely bored with their behaviour.
Fenris stepped out of the sleeping bag and came at him. Luke forced a jittery finger inside the trigger guard. Put the end of the barrel in Fenris’s direction.
Fenris did not stop.
Luke pulled the trigger. The trigger was unmovable. He tried to turn the rifle around to use the butt to strike Fenris, but the long barrel struck the wall behind his head. His own clumsiness and lack of coordination infuriated him; his arms felt like they were full of warm water.
He quickly swept the rifle to the side and parried Fenris’s bony hand that came slashing at him with his hunting knife still gripped in it. The point of the knife whisked a slot across Luke’s bicep, then cut his chest above the nipple. It felt deep; seemed to wake him up. He kicked the heel of his right foot into Fenris’s side, where it was wet.
The kid fell back, holding himself around the middle with both wet red hands. Luke ran sideways to the cabinets beside the window, to make room for himself, to get some air so that he could breathe. He looked down at the rifle; he had once fired a .22 rifle in the sea cadets; it had been a bolt action. He slid the bolt back and forth, hoping he was chambering a round. Pointed it at Fenris again, pulled the trigger. No movement from the trigger. ‘Shit.’
He leaned the rifle against the wall. It immediately slid down the patchy plaster and clattered noisily against the floor.
Fenris was now leaning on the plain wooden box that he had been sleeping inside. He had dropped his knife so he could hold his wet side with both hands. He was crying now. Looking at the ceiling, he called out for Loki twice. Then moaned in anguish and horror at the sight of his own blood coming over his hands and around the handle of the Swiss Army knife that was still stuck inside him; the knife Luke had just kicked deeper.
Upstairs: footsteps. Loud, skittering, scuffing, hurried: coming through the ceiling.
Luke went to Fenris. Picked up the sheath knife from before the youth’s skinny bare feet.
‘Please Luke,’ Fenris said.
Luke smashed it into the boy’s throat. All the way through, until the finger guard of the handle stopped against the lump of his Adam’s apple.
Luke stepped away, panting. ‘I’m sorry. Shit. Shit.’ He wanted this to stop now.
The old woman spoke in Swedish. She nodded her little white head in approval and her eyes smiled at him, over Fenris’s shoulder.
There was a terrible wet choking sound coming from Fenris, and he could not keep still. He staggered about the kitchen, dripping, then tottered out of the room, as if there were someone who could help him outside.
Heavy boots banged through a tight corridor upstairs, then boomed on to the stairs. Loki.
Fenris turned left in the dim hallway and ran for the front door like he was sick and wanted air.
Luke picked up the rifle, stared at it. Saw the little steel lever above the trigger guard. Put the end of the barrel against the floor, reached down with a hand and slipped the steel lever away from the SAFETY position.
Big boots boomed against the bottom two steps of the staircase and then came banging down the cramped hall on the ground floor. Loki was trying to be calm, but was worried; Luke could hear it in his voice, as he called out in Norwegian to Fenris; who he must have been able to see out on the porch or in the grass paddock. Luke shouldered the weapon and pointed the barrel into the middle of the doorframe. The rifle was so heavy, so long; it was hard to keep it aloft and steady. It made his arms feel frail.
But as soon as he had the rifle’s sights aimed at the doorway, Loki ducked into the kitchen, stooping at the waist so his head would miss the top of the frame. He did not see Luke until it was too late. Their eyes locked for a moment. Loki’s were puffy with sleep, running with mascara, and twitchy with shock. Just as he frowned in confusion, Luke shot him.
The rifle bucked; not too hard. But the sound deafened him. It seemed to crack the slate floor, smash all the windows and roar like a jet too low to the earth. Loki disappeared from the door. Luke’s ears whistled. The old lady cried out, afraid. Her little rough hands clouted her own ears. All was jittery around Luke; the world leapt in and out and nothing made sense in the ringing of his ears, in the impact of sending that bullet through a man.
Luke punched the bolt up, forward, back, and down. A brass shell dropped and bounced on to the slate stones; some smoke drifted from the end of the shell case. He was getting better. Not so clumsy. He could smell fireworks.
Loki was on all fours in the grubby hallway. Head down, hair covering his gasping face, his great back shuddering. Strangely, he too crawled at the front door which was wide open now.
Luke slipped on the floor. Looked down. His foot was wet with his own blood. He had slipped in the blood that was running down his leg from his hip. There was very little pain in his hip, but the sight of the blood made his vision go white. He stopped to be sick in the hallway, but nothing came out beside some phlegm. Mostly, it was just a big gassy burp. He looked over his shoulder at the stairs. But Surtr was not coming down yet. Up there it was silent.
Loki had reached the doorway and rolled onto his back, half on the porch, half in the hallway. They looked into each other’s eyes. They were both panting, exhausted, and unable to speak for a while. He had not realized the barrel of the gun had been directed so low when he shot Loki, but he had gunned him somewhere through the pelvis, where Loki’s big hands were now pressing into a dark wetness.
‘Luke. Stop!’ he commanded in his deep voice. Even covered in cracked white face-paint, Loki had never looked so pale.
Luke shook his head. Swallowed, but could not find his voice.
‘Luke, no. I ask this of you.’
Then words rushed out of him. ‘Where are the keys to the truck?’
Loki stayed quiet, but winced, screwed up his eyes against the pain.
‘Keys, Loki?’ He looked over his shoulder. Still no Surtr.
‘Upstairs. In my jacket.’
‘Where your fat bitch is? Nice try.’
Loki looked at him again; he was terrified, he had been telling Luke the truth about the whereabouts of the keys. Luke stared at
the long figure down there, shivering in agony. The man couldn’t have been older than twenty. Loki started to cry. Luke could not look him in the eye for long. He started to cry too; couldn’t help himself. He felt a terrible grinding remorse for what he had just done to Fenris and Loki; he was about to shut down at any moment.
Luke stopped crying. Was suddenly angry with himself. Swallowed hard. ‘My friends wanted to live, Loki. To see their children.’ He cleared his throat; spat phlegm onto the floor. ‘Mercy is a privilege out here. Not a right. You made it that way. You can die by your own rules.’ Luke cleared his throat again and said, ‘Fuck it.’ He aimed the end of the rifle barrel at Loki’s big face. ‘Consequences, Loki.’
‘No, Luke,’ Loki said in a voice that was not so deep now. He raised a big hand and stretched it towards Luke, palm first. The palm was bright red and wet.
Luke shot him through his fingers. Banged Loki’s big head down against the wooden deck of the porch. Behind his head was an instant wide swirl of murky liquid peppered with hard bits that Luke could not bring himself to look into. The sound of it coming out of Loki’s head was the worst thing he had ever heard.
Luke punched the bolt up, forward, back, and down. Stepped over Loki, who still twitched and shivered down the length of his legs. Luke was not worried about him getting up again.
Luke sniffed; there was mucus all over his mouth and chin. With one forearm he wiped at his eyes, then at his mouth.
Fenris was lying on his side, still moving, about twenty feet from the house. Pulling himself along the ground with one arm, towards the trees. Just to get away. Luke followed him. There was a lot of blood in the grass.
Then Luke paused and turned around to look up at the windows of the house. The whitish balloon of Surtr’s face peered down at him from the little window of the room where they had kept him captive. Her face was full of shock. They stared at each other and then she retreated away from the glass.
‘Hey,’ he said to Fenris. ‘Hey.’
Fenris looked up at him, his eyes bulged from his smeared face. A horrible speckling of blood dotted his chin and the forearm beneath the hand that clutched at the handle of the hunting knife moving up and down in his throat.
Luke looked away, at the trees. He felt dizzy and sick and he just wanted to sit down on the grass, but could not bring himself to get any closer to the sounds Fenris was making.
‘I could get the truck running. Put you in the back. Drive like a bastard to … Where, I don’t fucking know, but that road must go somewhere, Fenris.’
Fenris propped himself up on one elbow. He gasped, he choked, his throat produced a horrible aerosol of blood, a mist as he pulled air in and out of himself from mouth, nose and throat.
Luke looked back at the house, wondering if there was a second gun. Nothing moved in the old black building, but Surtr would have to come down soon. From where he stood in the paddock, he could see through the open front door, and along the hallway to the far rear wall of the building. But still, nothing moved.
He looked down at Fenris again. He wanted, he needed, to speak. To make some sense of this to himself. It was like he was just doing things without thinking any of it through. He was operating on instinct now. But where did these instincts come from?
‘It’s too late for all that,’ Luke said, surprising himself with his own voice that possessed an inappropriate strength. ‘I don’t think the world has enough time left for all that, Fenris. It’s too late to understand, you know. Everything has just gone too far. You can’t persuade any more, or re-educate. You think this, I think that.’
Fenris might not have been listening; he clawed towards Luke’s leg.
‘You kidnap, you murder. Can you expect any mercy? There are consequences. I told Loki the same thing. You never thought about them. Did you? Even if you were caught, you would still expect special treatment. That’s what gets me the most. And you would get it. Fuck that shit, Fenris. Just fuck it.’
Fenris gobbled with his mouth at the air; he reached for Luke’s leg again and convulsed. Luke shot him through his right eye from close range.
Luke turned and walked back to the house, paused on the porch. Stood beside Loki, to the left of the doorframe, and peered into the brownish hallway. Loki had stopped moving now, but was leaking all over the uneven planking. Luke regretted not asking Loki or Fenris where they had put his tobacco. He was light in the head, soul-buoyant. Wanted this finished, quick now.
‘Surtr!’
No sound from upstairs in the dark house.
What to do. What to do. What to do.
Bullets. How many? There was a magazine before the trigger guard. But he wasn’t sure how to detach it to check the ammunition, and if he did, he worried he would not be able to get the magazine back inside the rifle. These things were never simple. He would need a knife, a backup.
‘Surtr! Loki’s gone. Your friends. Gone. You hear me?’
Silence.
He hiked up the dress and looked at his hip; it was open like a mouth with no lips, and had soaked the hem of the dress with blood; new blood on old blood. He couldn’t bear to look into it. The knife had gone down to muscle on his chest too, and peering below the neckline of the gown and seeing the wound so close made him faint and cold and nauseous. He bent double and dared to close his eyes. Breathed deep. Then straightened, stepped over Loki, and went back inside the kitchen.
He looked at the old woman; she looked at him. She had not moved from her little cradle beside the stove. And seemed expectant, dissatisfied with him; he had work to do, was not finished. But how? he wanted to ask her, though she spoke no English and could not answer him. He did not want to walk up that narrow staircase and go into the tiny rooms with their low ceilings; it was no place for a man with no blood left inside him and a rifle in his shaky white fingers. The girl could be up there waiting, moon-faced in the dark, with a knife in her pudgy little fist. Bitch.
And what was he to do with these wounds. He was about to point at his hip and show the old woman the new mouth, when she looked at the wall. The wall opposite the stove. And nodded her shrunken leathery head. Luke frowned. She nodded again, raised her top lip to flash her discoloured teeth in a little snarl.
Luke looked at the wall, and the moment he did he heard the door give a tiny moan from across the hallway. He shouldered the rifle. Surtr had come down the stairs silently on her flat round feet and was waiting inside the parlour. And she would have seen Loki too.
He swallowed. And moved slowly back to the entrance of the kitchen. Hesitated. Wondered if he should go into the parlour. Sutr could be just inside the doorway. Yes, the door had moved. He was sure he had not left it like that, pushed halfway back to the frame. Or maybe it had swung back of its own accord and she was still upstairs, hiding, waiting.
Holding his breath, he crouched and moved sideways down the hallway to the front door, stepped over Loki and sank himself down to the grass. Then stood up straight and peered at the little grimy windows of the parlour from the outside. Too dim.
Moving closer to the old brown glass, he placed one foot on the sagging deck of the porch and Surtr came into focus so quickly he sucked in his breath and nearly yanked at the trigger.
Bent forward, she faced the floor of the parlour, which is why she could not see him at the window. She wore jeans and a black T-shirt. She was listening intently, pressed against the inside of the old parlour door; clinging and ready to swing around and into him had he walked back inside the room. Or she was poised to smash the door closed on the rifle as he went inside. Or maybe she would creep out and take him by surprise from behind as he passed that room to search for her. Clever. She wanted him. Always had done. No woman had desired him so much – desired him dead.
He boiled, sweated cold over his face. Gritted his teeth until they hurt and he raised the rifle at the window.
Fired.
In went the entire glass pane and up and onto her toes went Surtr, like she’d been electrocuted. For a
split second she was all shaky black hair and big white eyes. Something smashed inside. She cried out.
Was she hit?
Up, forward, back, down with the bolt in the breech. When Luke looked up she had gone from the parlour, the door closed behind her.
Luke hobbled sideways across the paddock and looked down and into the hallway of the house from outside. Heard the bump bump bump of her feet, somewhere inside, in the dark, out of sight. But she could not have reached the stairs, so she must have run inside the kitchen. Luke continued to walk sideways, outside, across the face of the house, with the rifle raised. He’d shoot the bitch through the glass of the kitchen windows. An eagerness, verging on excitement, made him tingle all over and sweat heavy.
There she was, going out the tiny back door of the kitchen; he saw her through the dirty windows as he squinted along the gun barrel.
Luke ran, ungainly, sloppily, with his breath hoarse and infuriating in his ears, down the side of the house, the rifle raised. He was desperate to fire it again. But he made sure to come round the corner of the house carefully, and into the rear paddock before the orchard, looking everywhere and ready to go.
No one on the grass.
Movement out there: in the orchard, on the other side of the truck. Off she went, fast for a big girl, between the trees planted along the side of the rutted track.
The rifle sights swam, then moved before his eyes. His hands were overeager, shaky. He blinked sweat out of his eyes. Refocused. Had her sighted. Then she was gone from the sights again, changing her direction, dodging, her big thighs pumping.
When he finally had her shape in front of the rifle sights, as she moved between two black-limbed trees, he fired.
Too high. Or had he hit her? She had vanished.
Cordite seared his face, his eyes, throat and nose. His ears rang out their resistance like a drill.
But no, he had not hit her, because there she was, still on her feet and running across the track at the side of the orchard. By the time he had the rifle cocked again, she was gone, into the trees where the forest began, on the other side of the track.