by Rob Parker
As he crossed the tarmac, Fletcher adjusted himself. Seemed he’d got excited again.
35
There was nothing else to say—this buggy was proper shit on unpaved roads. Unless the tarmac was spirit level smooth, or the gravel fine as sand, it bounced about like poor Olivia was strapped to a pneumatic drill. Christian knew there were fancier buggies—had known it when they bought this shoddy thing—but budget constraints, especially with the big move on the horizon, were a genuine thing for he and David, and no longer just ghostly concerns of those in distant social circles.
Served them right for buying a fancy new build before a referendum on the country’s continued inclusion in the European Union—and especially before anyone in the country (or the government for that matter) knew what the true implications of leaving the EU would be. Pennies suddenly had to be counted, while everything felt just that bit more expensive.
Christian quickly cast the thought aside—he and his husband had had countless conversations, done endless sums and debated the matter back and forth from all viewpoints they could think of. Too much brain power had been wasted on the topic of Brexit, and nothing would become clearer stewing on it now. What was done was done.
Besides, Christian had a mission. Against all possible odds granted by her mode of transport, Olivia was asleep soundly. Whisps of blond hair danced around the edges of her woollen bobble hat. Christian had wrapped them both up accordingly for this father-daughter day, which was four days one week, one the next, and repeated onwardly. Their employers had been excellent, extremely considerate and only too happy to help the men achieve their goals of finally managing to have a family and juggle their careers. Today David was in work, and it was to be a late one too, with his bosses giving him a chance of some much-needed overtime.
The frost of the morning had lifted, and as soon as it had, the pair had taken to the pavements of the estate, some finished, some like this one definitely not, and set off to find out just what the security of this place truly was. They knew they were paying for some, but just what service it was, Christian wanted to know—especially in light of things being not quite as serene as they had hoped. Something was amiss, definitely.
Words don’t just appear on baby monitors.
Baby clothes didn’t just appear in hedges.
Shit didn’t just fly up windows.
The words he’d heard were bothering him most because even he was beginning to doubt himself now, so much so that, with his memory of the moment scarred by tiredness, he was no longer entirely sure what he heard. But his first instincts—of fear, panic and somehow revulsion—remained the strongest. And if he couldn’t get answers as to what had caused it, he wanted answers as to what was being done to keep them all safe. This was what he hoped to find in the hut dead ahead, in the central reservation of the entrance road to the estate, directly beneath those grand gates.
The hut was little more than a wooden box with windows on three sides and a door on the last, wide enough for a chair to sit in—but he had never seen anyone either inside, by or around it. The wood itself was unfinished, unpainted and gave off a temporary air. Christian didn’t expect anyone to be there, but he thought, given its unimpressive condition, he could get in and find something with a phone number on it. There’d have to be something there—something he could use.
The central reservation was a muddy strip held in place by curbs on either side, and paving slabs up the centre. It was a poor excuse, and the whole thing looked like it was merely a placeholder for a much more impressive edifice when the rest of the estate was finished. It filled Christian with approximately zero confidence.
As he got there, the mist finally lifted, and he could see that, true to form, it was empty. He looked left and right, and checked on his daughter—still sound asleep. With his right foot, he clicked the buggy wheel brake on and checked that it wouldn’t roll anywhere on the pavement. He then hopped across the empty road to the hut, and looked through the windows.
Inside was not nearly as bad as the outside, and came as somewhat of a surprise. There was a small desk built into the wall, albeit out of that same shitty crumbling wood, yet above it was a bank of four plug sockets, some of them in use. Overhead, there was a dim, dangling bulb. This thing had power.
The air was still and pensive, but that could just have been Christian’s heightened sense of anxiety, knowing he was about to do something he wasn’t supposed to.
He tried the hut door, and the cheap black metal handle clanked. Somewhere, in the trees beyond where Olivia was parked up, a bird responded with a soft coo. Christian couldn’t help but pause. He was freaking himself out.
He blew air out, creating his own little mist cloud, and opened the cabin.
There was a chair. Nothing on the little drop-down desk. Two of the plugs were in use, and he followed the black snaking cables down into the recess beneath the table top, right through the partially closed zip of a sports holdall. There was nothing else in sight.
Plumbing the depths of just how naughty he felt he could be, he reached for the zipper on the bag, and pulled it to the sharp strip of metal teeth parting. Inside, were a couple of torches, and a load of batteries. One of the cable ends led to nothing, plugged into nowhere, but was clearly a phone charger thanks to the obvious connector on the end, just like Christian’s back at home. The other was plugged into a black box with smooth edges and a green LED blinking in the corner, next to an unlit red one. The front of the box slid back, and revealed batteries—green, rechargeable ones. And underneath them were other packets, a black fleece, a couple of spare torches and a head torch. It looked like the tool kit of an overnight security guard, which heartened Christian a great deal.
So there was someone here. And they appeared to be doing something at least. But where the bollocks were they?
Christian had one last look for paperwork, a quick rummage through the bag, but found nothing, although he conceded that the phone itself would have been nice, and if it were here he’d have to go through it if it was unlocked.
Christian caught himself. The phone. The bag.
Whoever it was must be there somewhere—nearby. Maybe they were even patrolling the site.
He was suddenly all too aware of his minor wrongdoing, so he hastily put everything back where he’d found it and shut the cabin door. Back at Olivia’s side, where she was still merrily miles away, Christian took in the surroundings.
He didn’t know for sure just how big the Blackstoke site was, but if the advertising bunkum were to be believed, there was room and scope for two hundred homes to be built, similar to theirs. If their little corner had five houses on it, and that was of a fair size as it was, then simply multiplying that inhabited area by forty, well, you had… a big area. A needle in a haystack kind of size, when it came to trying to find a solitary person.
Reluctantly, Christian turned back in the direction of Broadoak and home—but stopped in realisation.
He could take the car.
See how many roads they’d managed to get finished.
36
With a morning off for a dentist appointment, Alice had never been in the house by herself before. She was old enough, of course, but with everyone out at work, the shops and school, she felt that solitude with a surprising keenness. She had been left alone at their old house so many times, but that was then. This was unfamiliar, strange, didn’t feel like home yet. That would change very soon, she felt.
She stood on the top floor landing, looking down the gap between the winding staircase, all the way to the bottom. Whenever, as a family, they had stayed in a hotel, which admittedly hadn’t been that frequently, she had done this exact same thing. Ask to go to the highest floor the hotel had, and look down the stairwell drop to see the bottom. Sometimes, the sights had made her dizzy, and she remembered one particular hotel in Newcastle where the mosaic tiling on the bottom floor had been so far below she couldn’t even see the grouting that held it in place. She held the b
annister extra tight that day. Consequently, it was with a sudden wash of pride that this was her home now. Her family, lived in a place that had its own high coiling staircase down which she could ponder.
Suddenly aware that she had the run of the place, she moved down the stairs to go and have a proper snoop around. She’d barely been in any other room than her own bedroom on the top floor (her choice) and she wanted to have a good snoop. Where was her brother’s porn? For example. She heard that all teenage boys had porn stashed somewhere, and Alice had never actually seen any yet. She didn’t know whether it would repulse her, or if she’d find it interesting. She had no basis for comparison in this regard, aside from the notion that she felt it may carry some sort of instructive quality—far more informative than the oily music video obviousness and crass suggestion of the news media. She obviously knew all about reproduction and its mechanics, she just didn’t have much of an understanding of the fine details. This accompanied an obvious recognition of feelings within herself that she was scantly able to admit. But they only got so far, ending with a question mark. What did it all mean? Why was it such a preoccupation? And why was she, so steadfast and bold in so many other areas, bound by the same inevitability? She was aware that some other girls her age had done stuff by now, but on this topic, unlike some others, Alice was fairly happy to be behind the curve.
She bounded down the steps two at a time, suddenly dizzy-headed with the freedom of such a large space, and all the secrets it may contain. First stop, her brother’s room.
It was about three times as big as his old one, in a similar upgrade to Alice’s own circumstances. Massive telly being the new addition. Double bed too. The walls were white, and he hadn’t bothered putting up any posters yet. It felt clinical to Alice, as had her own room when she’d first entered it. Since then, she’d put her own aesthetic slant on the space, almost covering every square inch of white with postcards, photographs, posters, and those off little corners of white she couldn’t manage to cover with her mural-work, she Blutacked bright feathers from an old feather boa she found in one of the boxes. She had no idea whose it was, but the odd feather really wasn’t going to make a difference.
Where would I hide something if I was Jake? If I was a daft little boy who’d just opened his eyes to grown up things?
There was a bedside table in an expensive looking oak. Two drawers under a square table top, and under that, a little smooth-edged opening where the stunted curved legs emerged from.
Big sister was confident she’d worked little brother out.
She put her fingers under and into the gap, and her fingers immediately grazed paper. She grabbed and pulled them out, as her mind raced as to what the title of the magazine might be. Something astonishingly crass and childish no doubt. Big Jigglers. Or Whopping Boobers. She laughed, despite herself.
But it was none of these things. It was a sheaf of papers, rag tag, folded in an array of ways. Different sizes too. She pulled them out. The top one had a crudely drawn tombstone on it, with RIP WEST written on the front. The grave below was marked out in that same blue biro, tufts of grass around the edges, and sat on the supposedly freshly moved earth, were a pair of round spectacles.
37
Christian was amazed, now that he’d taken the time to investigate the streets and turning circles of Blackstoke, that nothing else was even remotely ready. On the roads close to their cul-de-sac, homes were half built, scaffolding in place, with no workers to match, while the further he drove away, the less and less was done, until there were merely dirt tracks with plots marked out in the grass. And then it was acres of untouched woodland.
It’s a weekday, Christian mused as he peered through the windshield. Where are they? And what have they been doing all this time?
These roads, only a couple of moments’ drive from his home, didn’t look like a development years in the making. It looked like everyone had downed tools, or that the COMUDEV money pit funding this whole thing had abruptly run dry. Christian couldn’t make head nor tail of it, and before long, the road surfaces themselves reflected that abandonment.
Tarmac became rough stone, then dirt. He was a mile from home now, he could see on the onboard satnav, which showed him as a red arrow in a vast green space. It clearly needed updating, but what would it be updated to? There was barely anything here. He followed the dirt road he found himself on, as it began to wind its way through high old trees, and it struck him that the extent of the roadway planning here was merely driving some kind of earth mover through the undergrowth, shifting it to one side so machinery could pass through.
Christian’s car, a sleek Mercedes built for a smooth commute, wasn’t suited to the terrain, so he stopped, and tried to take in his surroundings. There really was barely anything on this huge patch of development aside from their beautiful little road. The rest was good intentions at best.
Intrigued despite the nudge of disappointment, he wanted to press on on foot—then remembered not just baby Olivia snoozing in the back, but the crap buggy that wouldn’t get them anywhere.
He squinted through the trees down the dirt road, deep into the heart of the vast acreage he knew the development comprised. He’d come back another day. He’d have to.
He started a three-point turn, and as he spun the car sharply to the right on the first of those three movements, he noticed something shimmering beyond the tree tops. Of course, the shimmering was merely breeze giving life to the leaves of the canopy, but he could clearly see something solid beyond.
It was high and angular. His interest hooked, he pulled the car straight again, and forged slowly ahead along the dirt track into the trees.
It didn’t take long before he came upon another car. To his amazement, it was a white van with the word security printed on its panelled flanks, alongside mud sprayed up from the track itself. He pulled up behind it, and got out, taking a quick glance at Olivia. Fast asleep.
Christian glanced around. There was nobody here, although the trees were close on either side. Could never be too careful, and he was on edge enough, so he pulled out his keys—when his eyes caught up with what was on the glass his daughter was beyond. The reflection of what was in the sky behind him.
He turned, craning his neck upwards. Tall, and cresting the peaks of the surrounding greenery, in long-faded whitewash, was an observation tower.
38
Little shits, she thought.
Alice checked the other papers, and it was suddenly crystal clear and staring her in the face. Her little brother had been in school a mere couple of days, but he was already the target of relentless bullying. She felt an immediate boil inside.
She’d kill them. Whoever it was.
There were over twenty sheets in her hands, all different pens and handwriting. So many kids were in on it. This was supposed to be an elite school, where only high achieving kids went. What on earth were they teaching them there? It seemed that money couldn’t buy class, no matter the price. Alice was suddenly filled with a sibling pride she’d never known before, in an urgent rush. He’d simply shouldered it, her brother. He hadn’t made any fuss whatsoever. You wouldn’t even know anything was wrong, but of course, it had got to him. You didn’t keep reams of stuff that didn’t matter to you. And he’d just kept a lid on it.
Alice felt for him. Felt his pain. In the hurdy-gurdy churn of the day to day, where every device, large or small, yelped and bleated for your attention, it was easy to let the important bits slip by. Let the real fundaments of humanity float along with nary a glance. Her and her brother kept themselves to themselves, but their bond—or at least Alice’s with him, in that particular direction—had solidified quietly in the background.
She resolved to pay more attention, and offer him support. What big sister wouldn’t? And she’d also properly fuck up the kids that were sending him this crap. To that, she was committed.
She made sure the evidence of Jacob’s torture was in the right order and stashed just as she’d found i
t, and walked out of the room. She didn’t want to snoop anymore, and now felt bad for even contemplating it. Heading down to the ground floor, she took the last flight of stairs, then noticed something through the window on her way down—the back window, which gazed over the rear aspect of the house. The garden was unimpressive, especially in the grey morning light, which in itself could knock the sheen off anything, and was waiting for the stroke and sweep of landscaping. It was a mere three-sided square attached to the back of the house, walled by freshly-creosoted fence panels.
It was none of this that had caught her eye, however. Her attention was caught instead on the thing that had appeared in the middle of it all. Something about a metre tall, a thin pole, like a bird table—except there wasn’t a cheery little feeding station on the top. No, there was something off about the shape that sat there.
Alice ran down the stairs, straight into the kitchen and out of the back door, tiptoeing onto the cold patio flags in bare feet. She was drawn to it, whatever it was, and without thinking found herself walking onto the fresh turf, the morning dew needling the soles of her feet.
As she got closer, her stomach roiled, as she processed the three colours of the shape, dangling on top of the pole. Black. Orange. Vivid red.
She stopped a yard from the obscene monument, feeling suddenly too young to ever see such a thing.
It was a black strut from a metal fence railing, exactly like the ones which lined the estate, pushed into the turf to stand upright. At the top was a sharp point, rendering the pole a solid obsidian spear, and on that point was a blood-soaked tangle of twisted fur. She could make out a tiny foot on a leg that was bent impossibly upward, and a pink marbled section that looked like uncooked chicken. There was a shard of face, missing parts, but she could see one little jet-black bead embedded in the hair. An eye. The fur itself dangled loosely, an orange stripe right through it, dripping blood onto the grass in fat drops.