‘The tide,’ the Devil said quietly. ‘The voice I heard from the throat of the man in the woods … it used the same phrase. That was Zhakq, Vaneclaw. Him, or one of the others. Perhaps all of them together, disguised.’
‘I don’t get it, boss.’
‘Everything we just heard was lies. They have already turned against me. It is they who have somehow prevented the Sacrifice Machine from performing its function.’
‘So what are they going to do, boss?’
‘They’re going to attack. They are trying to finally claim this world for their own.’
Chapter 30
Kristen hesitated in the back of the cab, looking out at the house. It looked the same. Of course. She didn’t expect Steve to have done anything to it in the meantime, not least because while he’d had the ideas often enough, it was pretty much always she who’d said ‘OK, so let’s get this thing done.’
It looked the same. It probably was the same. But now she was looking at it from the outside.
‘Say hi to your husband for me.’
‘Huh?’
‘Your husband,’ the driver said. He had been, thankfully, one of the silent types, not saying a single word since picking her up from San Jose. ‘I drove him to the airport last year. Had a meeting in LA. He seemed like a nice guy.’
‘He is,’ Kristen said. She didn’t know what else she could have said. Then she realized part of what the driver was probably saying was that Kristen been sitting looking out of the window for nearly a couple of minutes now and it’d be cool if she would move so he could get on with his actual job.
She climbed out. Waited until the driver had disappeared back down the street, then walked up the path.
She rang the doorbell.
No response.
She rang again, and stood patiently outside for a few minutes, but it was just too damned cold. She had a key. They were still married. Her daughter lived here. If you wanted to get right down to it, she paid the lion’s share of the mortgage.
She let herself in.
The house looked the same inside, too. Though tidier. Kristen would be the first to admit she had a habit of leaving things around. Her rationale when pressed was that she tended to need the same things in the same places, so what was the point of moving them back where they’d come from – and also she was busy and for Christ’s sake was it really so big a deal?
Seeing the living room and kitchen so very tidy, however, made her realize that to an unbiased observer it might appear as though the mess had been removed from these lives.
And that the mess had been her.
She took off her coat. Got the kettle on. Found the instant coffee – Steve had resisted buying a fancy espresso machine on the grounds that going out to buy a latte or Americano was the closest thing he had to a ‘lifestyle’ when in the word mines, and just about his only reason for leaving the house. The coffee was a different brand – why? – but in the same place as always, of course. Steve’s muscle memory had been trained over the years to put it there. Hers had too. Memory also made you expect to find the same person in the same place. It got to the point where you could find your way around your life in the dark, or with your eyes closed. The problem was, once you’d noticed this, you might be prone to ask whether that was a good thing.
After all these weeks, she still wasn’t sure.
She leaned on the counter, waiting for the water to boil. Her head dropped. She was very tired indeed.
Meanwhile a truck was turning into High Street. This wasn’t the main road through the centre of town, as the name might imply. Instead it led from the highway up to the higher part of the west side, where Hannah’s house stood.
Nash was driving. Jesse was riding shotgun, holding Nash’s phone where he could see the screen. Eduardo and Chex were awake now too. Nobody had slept in a while – certainly not since arriving in California. Nash had been wondering how the next message would arrive, how he’d know what to look for. Then just after they’d crossed the state line his phone had blinked into life. It wasn’t incoming SMS or email this time, though, incessant pings from customers back in Miami trying to get hold of drugs and wondering where the hell their normally reliable dealer had gotten to. It was the map app starting itself up, though nobody had been touching the phone at the time.
A dot appeared in the centre of the screen. The dot pulsed. It did not look the way it usually did, a cheery little blue flag. It was a dark, lustrous gold, like a treasure box.
It looked like the kind of thing you’d want. To sell, or keep for yourself. To own.
They set a course towards it.
Kristen drank her coffee sitting at the counter. She felt brittle and wide-eyed. A third of her soul was still back in London. A third was here in Santa Cruz. She had no idea where the other part was. She thought maybe she should try to find out. It might be the part that understood her life.
The couch in the living room was calling out to her. It was as if she could actually hear its voice. The couch was comfortable, she knew. Very, very comfortable. She could go and sit, wait for them there. That’d be nice.
Except she’d fall asleep. Of that there was no doubt. And she didn’t want to be discovered sprawled sideways, head back and mouth open and most likely snoring. Certainly not if her presence was unexpected. Not cool. Not dignified.
She wandered into the living room, phone in hand, trying to work out what to say. Her feet took her towards the couch, like cats silently herding their owner towards a feeding bowl.
In a minute, she promised them, and herself. First, I need to at least let him know I’m here.
She dialled Steve’s number. It went to voicemail. She started talking.
Then she realized something was going on outside.
Nash got out and strode up the path without even killing the engine. Jesse reached across, turned off the ignition, and then he and the other two guys followed their boss.
They didn’t know why they were here, heading towards some random nice-looking house in a town none of them had heard of. But someone was home, obviously. A ton of lights were on.
Then they saw a woman in the living room, on the phone.
Jesse felt his heart sink, and hoped this wasn’t going to be some kind of messed-up home-invasion deal. He’d done bad stuff in his life, hell yes – but never one of those, and he didn’t want to start now. Even bad guys have a line in the sand, a point past which they’d prefer not to go. Jesse knew all too well, however, that Nash’s skill was dragging guys over lines.
The woman saw them coming. She disappeared.
Nash got to the door and hammered on it with his fist.
The woman didn’t open up, obviously. Jesse sure as hell wouldn’t have done either. And weren’t you supposed to ease your way in, knock politely, say ‘Hey, is that your dog in the road’ or something, before pushing past?
Nash hammered on the door again, ever louder, totally blowing that option. Which was OK by Jesse, and – he could tell – the other guys, who looked as unnerved as he was.
And then, before Nash banged on the door a third time, it flew open and all the lights in the house went out.
Kristen saw the man heading up the path and knew that whatever this was about, it wasn’t good. He didn’t look like someone Steve would know. He didn’t look like someone that anybody law-abiding would ever want to know. The others with him seemed less sure of their purpose. That didn’t matter. That guy was the man. That was obvious. Whatever he did, they’d get dragged along for the ride.
She backed hurriedly away from the window though she knew she’d already been seen. Instinct told her to head towards the kitchen and the back door. She could get out into the yard from there and over the fence. Although the guy who lived next door was kind of weird, he was generally home. It’d be a start.
Except the back door wouldn’t open.
The sound of hammering fists on the front door.
She yanked at the back door, finally spotti
ng that the key wasn’t in the lock. They always left it there. She and Steve did, anyhow. The only person who moved it was his ditzy sister, who thought it’d be safer up on the …
Yes – there it was. Balanced on top of the doorjamb. Why had Zo been here?
More hammering. Starting to panic, Kristen stuffed the key in the lock. But it wouldn’t turn. The door hadn’t been locked. It just wouldn’t open.
The knob in her hand suddenly went ice cold and she heard the front door crashing open and realized she’d run out of time.
She turned and ran upstairs. There was nowhere else to go – and at least up there she could lock herself into one of the bedrooms and call the cops.
But when you feel the need to run, you want to run far, and so instead of heading for the room she used to share with Steve, she kept going to the end, to Hannah’s.
Only when she was in it, dead-end committed, and could hear the sound of heavy footsteps heading towards the stairs, did she remember that Hannah’s door key had long ago been lost.
Kristen was scared now. Really very scared.
She looked wildly around. Closets – but she knew they were jammed full of clothes and old toys and stuff that neither she nor her daughter had the heart to throw out. No room for her.
There was nowhere to hide.
Except …
She dropped to the floor and scrambled under the bed, knowing it was a lost cause, knowing that they’d find her – but when something’s coming to get you, the body shoves the mind aside and keeps running for as long as it can.
Nash was thorough. Though he’d heard the woman running upstairs he sent two of the guys to check the downstairs rooms, to make sure there was no one else home. Meanwhile he took Jesse upstairs with him.
‘Why’s it getting so cold in here?’
‘Don’t know,’ Nash said. ‘Don’t care.’
They checked the rooms one by one. ‘Where’d she go?’
‘What’d I just say, Jesse?’
Finally there was only one room left to search. Jesse followed Nash into it, confused now. The woman wasn’t in there either, which made zero sense.
‘But why are we even here? If it’s not for the woman?’
Seemed like the room belonged to a kid, a girl. Nash wandered around, and eventually stopped in front of a bizarre-looking sculpture on the bookcase. It looked like it had been made from the insides of about six different types of machines.
Nash raised his hand, slowly. Held his palm out towards the sculpture. One of the little balls of fire he could do coalesced there. Without warning it suddenly zipped into the machine and exploded, showering Jesse with parts.
Nash turned, and smiled one of those smiles that said someone was about to get hurt. Jesse hoped it wasn’t him.
Nash pointed to the bed. Raised one finger to his lips. Turned his other hand over, opened it out, and raised it.
Lift it.
Jesse realized it was the only place she could have gone. They’d found her. So whatever was about to happen here was really going to happen, and after that … life wasn’t going to be the same. He thought about trying to talk Nash down but knew it was a lost cause. He’d never seen the boss like this before. It was like something had control of him. Something really bad.
So he bent over and got his hands under the side of the bed and lifted one side. But there was no one under there. Just a very old-looking suitcase, made of battered leather.
Jesse blinked. ‘Huh?’
Nash grinned. ‘That is what we’re looking for.’
Chapter 31
Aunt Zo let Hannah stay fiercely gripped around her father for five whole minutes, using every last jot of patience. Then, when her niece had finally loosened her grip and slid into the chair next to him, she strode up to the table.
‘You’re an idiot,’ she said, and cuffed her brother around the back of the head.
Half an hour later, Hannah’s father had said sorry to Aunt Zo enough times to stop her glaring at him in such a scary way. He’d apologized to Granddad, too, who merely shrugged.
‘I’m glad you’re OK,’ he said.
‘That’s it?’ Aunt Zo barked. ‘No questions to ask?’
Granddad thought about it. He looked around the restaurant. ‘Is the food here any good?’
And so – after some gentle encouragement – he got Aunt Zo to move with him to another table, where they ordered something to eat. Hannah didn’t feel hungry. She stayed in the chair right next to her father. He seemed different, though she couldn’t put her finger on how. He looked tired, not in the way he had started to before he sent her away to Granddad, but the way he was when he’d been working especially long and hard on something, and came down from his study at the end of the day, distracted but content.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘When I suggested you go stay with Granddad, I didn’t know I was going to come here. But I sat around the house for a day, alone … It was worse even than I’d thought it would be. I wanted to call Granddad and say I’d made a mistake, he should send you back, but I didn’t think that would be fair to you.’
‘I would have come back right away,’ Hannah said.
‘I know – that’s the point. That’s not your job. So I decided to come down here. To … well, to work. Only when I got here did I find their Wi-Fi is borked. And there’s no data signal, as you know. I asked in the office if I could at least send an email to Granddad from their machine but it was borked too. It was late by then, and I’d just driven down, so I figured I’d stay the night and go home the next day. Except …’
Her dad looked away, across the lobby. ‘Except I sat at this table,’ he said. ‘And … I remembered it all.’
‘Remembered what?’
‘All the times we’d been here. It was why I checked in here. At first I was going to try one of the other motels, but then I thought, No, that’s dumb. There are too many things to avoid. Too many places we’ve all been together, too many things we’ve done. I can’t turn my back on them forever just because it’s painful the first time. If I take out everything that used to be me, or you-and-me and our family, all that’s left is loading the dishwasher and chasing deadlines and that’s no way to live. I remembered sitting at one of these tables when you were nine months. And eighteen months. And four years old, and eight. What you had to eat. What I had, what … your mom had. And then getting you to sleep afterwards in the room. Sometimes you’d drop right off. Sometimes it’d be like wrestling an anaconda. I never knew which it was going to be, which drives you nuts, but that’s also what it’s about. It’s what reminds you it’s real, actually happening, like spotting a grey hair on the head of the woman you love.
‘Then, sitting out on the deck outside the room afterwards, sipping a beer with your mom and talking about … stuff. Nothing important. Whatever. Random happy words. That’s what I miss the most. Now whenever I talk to people, it’s always about something. On those evenings I just talked. And listened. It’s … Christ.’ Her father suddenly seemed to realize what he’d been saying. ‘I’m sorry. These are not age-appropriate observations.’
‘It’s OK.’ Hannah did not want him to stop saying things, whatever they were. She had never actually heard him say so many words in one lump before, and nor had anyone ever spoken to her as if they realized she was a lot more grown-up inside than she looked. ‘But … why didn’t you come home the next day?’
‘Because after I’d thought about those things, I opened the laptop and tried to do some work. It’s how I escape, when things aren’t good. It was slow at first, but then it wasn’t. When they closed down here for the night I went to my room and kept on working, and when I woke the next morning I made coffee and kept on going. I know … I know Mom and Dad’s work probably seems dumb to you sometimes. Just a way of us not being there.’
‘Kinda,’ Hannah admitted.
‘I get that. And I know sometimes I get too into it, or too stressed about it, when it’s not the most important t
hing in the world. But … look, you know, we’ve had the conversation. Partly I work for the money. Everything costs, right?’
Hannah nodded. They had definitely had this conversation. More than once. She had learned during an early example that ATMs did not give out money to just anyone, but that you had to put money in them first. At the time she’d been baffled as to how you pushed the bills into the machine, but had developed a (slightly) more sophisticated understanding of finance since.
‘But that’s not it,’ her dad said. ‘There are a lot of things that matter in life, that are important to having a good life. Your family. Having fun. Being warm and fed.’
‘And having pets. Like a kitten.’
‘Um, right. And those are the most important things. But you’ve got to be, too. You’ve got to do things. You’ve got to live your life out loud. Do you see what I mean?’
‘I think so,’ Hannah said. She watched as a waitress put food in front of Aunt Zo and Granddad. Her stomach growled.
‘I knew you were with Granddad, and he’d look after you. And I assumed they’d get the internet fixed, but they didn’t. Still haven’t. I was going to head home tomorrow, first thing.’
‘It’s OK, Dad.’
‘It’s not,’ he said.
‘No, really it is,’ Hannah said. ‘You’ve shaved.’
Her father put his hand to his chin, puzzled. ‘Well, yeah. So?’
‘Never mind. Can I have something to eat? I’m starving.’
And so Hannah and her dad moved to the other table, and she had a cheeseburger, and then it was time to head home. Hannah said she wanted to go in Dad’s car, to be with him. And she did want this, very much, though she also thought it might give Granddad and Aunt Zo a chance to talk about the story of Erik Gruen.
As they were getting the check the Devil walked into the lounge. He looked far more irritable than Hannah had ever seen him before, which was saying a lot. Irritable and old and perhaps even worried. He stood by their table and glared around at the other people in the restaurant with evident dislike.
Hannah Green and Her Unfeasibly Mundane Existence Page 18