Face

by Tim Lebbon

  few seconds as dizziness threatened to spill her down the stairs. She closed her eyes but could not see any less or any more, so she opened them again to the red haze. So much light flowing through so much wine … would blood paint this room the same, she wondered? Would my opened veins catch the light in the same way?

  “Come down here,” Brand whispered, “I don’t want you to fall and bleed.”

  “I’m scared,” Nikki whispered, the fact that she found it necessary to lower her voice scaring her more. If this was a crypt, then it was only right to whisper.

  It’s wine, she told herself, light through wine, not blood, there’s no blood on the walls down here.

  “It’s only right to be scared. Life is very frightening. Your friends up there haven’t figured that out yet, because they’re still children. Still merrily going along thinking everything is going to be all right. But you … you know different. You know to be frightened. You’re a woman now, Nikki.”

  Nikki walked down the stairs, the wooden boards creaking beneath her weight. Her final footstep onto concrete was silent. “Where are you?”

  Brand appeared in front of one of the racks. She had not noticed him there-she was sure he hadn’t been there-but then he moved and made himself apparent. He still had pink blood from the steak smeared across his chin and one cheek, and the weak light caught it like sunburn. Nikki glanced up at the bulb and saw that it hung

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  naked in the center of the cellar, the reddish shade picked up from where it was reflected in and out of bottles and racks, carrying a bloody vintage as it aged.

  “Nikki,” he said, “such a beautiful name for a woman deserving much, much more.”

  The dark was contributing to her drunkenness, taking away points of reference so that up and down began merging into one sideways slant. She staggered a little and then went to her knees in the dust. She hung her head, embarrassed, but then his hand touched her chin and lifted her face so that she could look up into his eyes.

  “You deserve so much more,” he said, “because you’re beautiful, and although your parents know that, they will not tell you. Telling you would make you a woman and in their eyes you’re still their little girl. Even when you’re screwing Jazz you’re a little girl, because he’s such a little, little boy.”

  His other hand was at the front of his trousers, unbuttoning his fly.

  What? Nikki thought. What’s he doing? But when she saw it, all doubts vanished.

  For the briefest of moments realization hit her, hard and fast and full of a very sober panic. He’s just like the rest of them.

  “Just like eating meat,” Brand said softly. His face had not changed, his hand was hot on the back of her neck, and as she took him in her mouth she found that it was hot too.

  Nikki did not move for a while, just knelt there drunk and swimming in silent disbelief as she thought about what she was doing. At the same

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  time she was hugely turned-on, this beautiful man had seduced her into doing this, he had whispered sweet nothings and told her hidden truths, so much more confident than clumsy Jazz, more subtle than any of those boys upstairs. She began flicking her tongue, but Brand did not react. She continued, moving her head now, but still no reaction.

  Looking up, expecting Brand’s eyes to be closed and his head back, she saw him staring down at her. The expression on his face was static, the lines around his mouth deeper than ever in this half-light, and his eyes were a deep black, pupils wide to suck in the light.

  The only warning that he was about to come was when he pulled back. His breathing did not change, there were no groans or gasps, just that hard, cold look. As his sperm hit her face and chest Nikki jerked back in surprise-it was so cold! Like being hit by flecks of ice. It was freezing on her chin. It ran from the corner of her mouth like blood from the steak, cold and lifeless and useless.

  Brand turned and left the cellar before she had a chance to say anything. Before he closed the door on her, he whispered back down: “Think about it, Nikki.” Then he was gone.

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  The Book of Lies

  History is more important than the future because it’s already happened. What has been affects our lives every day, what will be will merely be.

  Bullshit.

  The future is more important than the past because it’s where we will live our lives, it’s a blank canvas upon which we can perform any act, change any fact.

  More bullshit.

  The future and the past are equally meaningless because they are nebulous entities, times that do not exist, containing events which have no echo because they are gone, or which hold no import because they are yet to happen. What is important is the here and now, and now, and now, and the spaces between the nows. A

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  merit is indefinable, immeasurable, so finite that there is no unit attributable to it. A thought, perhaps? Can a thought be a unit of time? But what goes to make up a coherent thought … surely there’s no one image there, no one electrical pulse in the brain, but many thousands? And where does one thought end and another begin? There is no middle ground, no bridging gap of nothing, because that’s not the way our minds work. By the time you let out a breath, drawing it in is history, as inconsequential as every breath you’ve ever breathed in your past, all those millions of unconscious bodily functions that go to drive you on toward death.

  How many moments are there in the space of an orgasm, I wonder? A male orgasm first, that building of pressure and the explosion of relief, those few spurts of outright rapture that are long enough to contain epiphanies, but which never reveal anything so grand. Or a female petit mort, the bursting of a dam that sends shudders along limbs and a red flush across chests and cheeks. How many thoughts?

  How many moments?

  How much can happen in such a short space of time?

  It’s here and now that counts. Between a gasp and sigh, a life can change forever.

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  Chapter Eleven

  Once when she was fourteen Nikki had not come home.

  Dan had walked to her room, still groggy from the bottle of wine he’d consumed the night before, mindful that she had been out to a party and allowed to stay out past his and Megan’s bedtime for the first time… be quiet when you come in, they’d said, don’t wake us up … and still vaguely unsettled that both he and Megan had fallen asleep, when really they should have been unable to sleep. They should have waited up for her. Any responsible parent would have.

  That thought had repeated again and again when he saw that her bed was empty.

  A search of the house had revealed no sign of Nikki. The front door was still unlocked, her jacket hadn’t been thrown over the chair in the

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  kitchen … she was missing. Megan’s first tearful outburst was directed at Dan, telling him to ring the police, casting unfair accusations when she really knew that they were both at fault.

  A simple phone call to Nikki’s friend’s house had solved the mystery. Their mother had left Dan hanging on the phone for a while and then come back to say that Nikki was there, asleep on the floor of her daughter’s room, and that perhaps Dan would like to come and collect her? She’s been drinking, she had said.

  Nikki’s experimentation with alcohol was the least of their worries that day.

  Ever since then, every time Dan walked the corridor to his daughter’s room knowing that she should be in, the fear was waiting to strike again the minute he opened her door. A fear underpinned with guilt and a sense that he was an unworthy father. He wondered how much his life was shortened by worry and dread whenever Nikki promised to be home by midnight.

  Today there was more reason than ever to wish her here. A bad reason. Dan was here for Nikki to talk to if she needed that, but she had to be here too. Had to.

  He knocked on her door, holding a cup of tea in his other hand. “Morning Nikki.” He never waited for an answer before opening her door.

 
; For a second he knew she wasn’t there. She didn’t answer, maybe opening the door covered her response, after all she’s probably still asleep, but I didn’t hear anything, she didn’t reply, she’s not here …

  Then he saw the shape hunched beneath the

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  tangled duvet, hair hanging over the edge of the bed and almost touching the floor.

  Dan looked down at his daughter for a few seconds, relieved and sad and still just as worried as ever. He always would be, that was his lot in life as a father. To be just as worried as ever.

  He put the cup on the bedside table and nudged her shoulder. “Nikki.”

  She stirred, mumbled something, turned over and sighed.

  “Nikki.” He nudged her again, shaking her for a second. She woke up, opened a bleary eye and looked at him.

  “It can’t be morning,” she moaned, pulling the duvet back over her head.

  Normally Dan would have snatched up a pillow and beaten his daughter with it, hauled her out of bed, jumped on her, tickled her nose with a feather from the duvet, anything to annoy and wake her at the same time. But this morning was not normal.

  “Ten o’clock,” he said. “Didn’t you hear the phone?”

  “Nope.”

  “Was Jeremy there last night?”

  For a moment he thought she’d fallen back to sleep. He could not hear her breathing. She froze, still as death, then flipped back the duvet and answered without looking him in the eye. “No, he didn’t show. Big asshole.”

  “He hasn’t shown at home either, this is the second night. His father rang me this morning. They’ve called the police.”

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  Nikki sat and picked up her tea, still not meeting Dan’s eye. “Oh.”

  “Sure you didn’t see him? Meet up again, have another row, send him off in a huff?”

  “No Dad, he wasn’t there. People asked, I asked around too, but no one has seen him.”

  “His dad’s frantic. He’s been out since four this morning looking for him. One night they can live with, he said, because it’s happened before. But he spent yesterday evening ringing everyone he could think of who may know where he is-“

  “Didn’t ring me.”

  “It was just after we left to drop you at Mandy’s, your mum took the call. And no one has seen him, like you said.”

  Nikki took a sip of her tea, winced when she burned her lip and stared from the window. She never drew her curtains. Dan was sometimes worried about people watching her from out there, but really, who would? The Wilkinson’s house wasn’t in line-of-sight of her window, and the chances of there being anyone in the woods … but he didn’t want to think about that, about Brand, not here and now. Brand was an unproven threat, whereas Jeremy was definitely missing, a real problem he could face and try to tackle. However little he could actually do about it.

  “Nikki, why would he do this? Is he really this immature?”

  She seemed to be looking at something out there. “Huh?”

  “You know where he is, don’t you?”

  ” ‘Course not.”

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  “Why aren’t you worried then? Your boyfriend’s missing for two nights and you’re not worried about him.”

  “I don’t think he’s my boyfriend any more, Dad.” Nikki took another sip of tea and looked over the rim at Dan. Steam blurred her eyes, but he was sure there was humor in them, a mocking humor perfected by teenaged girls for their father, whose only job it was to protect them and try to shield them from whatever threats he knew to be waiting out there for her.

  “Get dressed. The police may call in this morning.”

  “You invited them over?”

  Dan shook his head and turned to leave. “Jeremy’s dad said he’d suggested this as the first place to start looking.” He expected something more from Nikki, some comment, smart-arsed or flippant. But he closed the door softly behind him, wondering what she was looking at so silently. His back, or the woods beyond her window.

  Megan was in the kitchen. She had emptied the contents of one of the low-level cupboards and now she was half inside on her hands and knees, sweeping into the corners and scooping out any bits of rubbish, old spider webs and desiccated insects. She’d bag it all up, tie a knot and throw it into the bin, which was already half full with rubbish she’d taken from other kitchen cupboards. She looked hot and tired and dusty. When she refilled the cupboards with saucepans, cans of food and cooking utensils, she did not do

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  it neatly. She was cleaning out, not tidying up.

  She’d been working since five o’clock that morning.

  “Nikki’s awake,” Dan said.

  “About time.” Megan’s voice was muffled by the cramped space. Dan could see the muscles on her arm tensing as she bashed at something in there. “Ants,” he thought she said, but it may have been something else.

  He’d asked what she is doing, of course, but she had merely responded with a tirade about how dirty the house was, how many insects lived there with them, how could he live somewhere so filthy and alive? Initially he’d thought it another reaction against living in the country, a horribly unsubtle dig at the lifestyle. She’d already told him that she wanted to move back to the city, but he knew the way she worked. The occasional hint-a reminder of that conversation-would be forthcoming more and more often until they either had another argument, or he capitulated.

  Now, he was not so sure. Megan had not knowingly killed anything in her life.

  He walked to the bin she’d been filling and picked out a clear polythene bag. She’d barely dirtied it before tying a knot, twisting a strip of wire around its neck and burying it under the others. Almost as if she was trying to stop something from escaping once she’d put it in there. There was a spider, body burst like a rotten currant, its legs tangled with those of another spider, long dead and dried out by time. Dust peppered their corpses. There was other stuff in the bag:

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  hairs; chewed paper; dark objects which may have been mouse droppings or dead, curled woodlice.

  “Megan,” Dan said.

  “Hmm?” She pulled herself out of the cupboard to glance up at him.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I told you earlier, I’m tidying up.”

  “Why didn’t you just throw this spider out? You never kill spiders.”

  She glanced at the bag and seemed to shy away from it, just for a second. “It scared me. Dropped on me. I hit it from my hair and killed it.” She moved to the next cupboard and began emptying it. One of the boxes she brought out was adorned with spider webs, and she examined it closely to see whether there were any living creatures clinging to it.

  It seemed that there were none. Dan was glad. He didn’t want to see her killing anything, because that just wasn’t her.

  “I’m nipping into the village,” he said. “Thought I’d chat to Brady about that weekend away we’re planning.” If ever there was a sore point that would bring Megan into conversation with him, it was this. He, Brady, Justin and Ahmed Din going away for a weekend to London later in the year, taking in a reformed Black Sabbath concert and generally having a fun time. She wasn’t too keen. He hated that, but he hated arguing about it more, so it had always remained at the fringes of conversation.

  “Okay,” she said. He heard a slap in the cupboard and a muttered comment he could not

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  make out. Another one bites the dust.

  “Honey, you sure you’re alright?”

  “Why shouldn’t I be?”

  “You’re… oh never mind.” He turned to leave. “I love you,” he called back over his shoulder.”

  “Me too.” Slap.

  And there goes another one, Dan thought.

  He was going into Tall Stennington to see the police. He should have done it yesterday straight after Brand had called him at the office, offered those threats. And then after Brady had suggested it as well; he should have done it then. Letting Nikk
i out last night was madness, leaving Megan alone more so … but he was the man of the house.

  He was the protector.

  He had to do what was best for them.

  “Lock the door after me,” he said, but he did not stay long enough to see the look on Megan’s face.

  Dan drove past the police station. He didn’t know why. Perhaps it was some sort of stupid, puffed-up pride left over from that time in Bar None, a confidence that he had beaten Brand once and could do so again. Or it could have been the “this can’t happen to me” distraction, a belief that the phone call from Brand had been full of empty threats, the tall man shamed and embarrassed into verbal abuse when he knew that a physical assault would only fail again. Every second he drew further away from the police station he berated himself, knowing that he

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  was doing the wrong thing, knowing that he should get help just in case… just in case Brand …

  He steered toward the kerb and slammed on the brakes, raising smoke behind him. If there had been anyone close they would have hit him, nudged the Freelander up onto the pavement and into the row of cottages leading into Tall Stennington. He was lucky.

  It took a few seconds for his mobile phone to find a signal. He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, revved the engine as if about to head off and do something about his inaction. He wondered where Jeremy was, and considered for the first time the serious possibility that something bad may have happened to him.

  He dialled home. It rang, and rang, and rang, and with every ring the scenario became more and more clear: Megan buried head-first in a cupboard; Brand stepping in the back door because she had forgotten to lock it behind Dan; his wife calling him, thinking he had returned early; Brand standing behind her like one of her out-of-sight memories, watching, waiting for her to look up into his dead, deadly black eyes-