Face

by Tim Lebbon

  And he was lost.

  He stood and started edging around the pool, making his way to the far side where the gully wall tapered back down to the forest floor. He could try to climb back up where he was now, but last year’s leaves and the snow combined to make that an almost impossible task. Besides … he looked back over his shoulder, terrified that he’d see Brand staring down at him, but he was even more scared not to look.

  There was no sign of anyone up there. And that void in the snow must have been caused by the breeze.

  Must have.

  His feet slipped into the water several times, each submersion seeming to increase the numbness and make him more and more concerned. He’d never had to worry about frostbite or freezing or banging his head and drowning or breaking a limb and lying helpless as a snowstorm slowly buried him, the snow melting at first as it touched his warm body, but eventually settling as he lost his heat, his heart, his soul to the blizzard. He glanced up constantly, noticing that the level of the forest floor came lower and lower the further he shifted around the pool. Eventually he

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  could see over the bank, and then he turned and moved sideways on his stomach until he could reach up and haul himself out of the gully. He crawled a few feet on his hands and knees before standing, trying to hug heat into himself and prevent it being leeched away by the snow.

  He had to move. To stay still would be to submit, and that’s just what Brand wanted. If he sat down and buried his head in his hands, slowed his breathing and let the snow erase him from this world, Brand would come to visit him.

  Dan could never do that. There was Megan and Nikki, Megan and Nikki, he kept repeating those names in his head and conjuring their faces, trying to see joy and amusement in them, not the fear and suspicion he’d seen in Megan the last time he was with her.

  Something ran by him between the trees. It was a shadow against the whiteout, yet still he could not discern its true form. He hunched down, held his breath and tried to stop his teeth from chattering together.

  Footsteps. The sound of something sharp scraping across a tree trunk. A smell, some dank odor not belonging to the fresh snow. A growled giggle … or perhaps it was ice in his ears, melting and popping.

  Dan ran. He didn’t care about making a noise because Brand knew he was here. Neither did showing his fear concern him; it was beyond hiding. He tried to wave curtains of snow aside as he ran, dodged some trees, hit others, fell to the ground and scrambled to his feet again. All the time that shape may have been behind him,

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  inches from his back, reaching for his neck, but he could not turn around to look. He fended branches from his face and let them flip back, hoping they would hit any pursuer and distract them from the chase.

  The path dipped and curved, fallen snow conspiring to hide the lay of the land and sending him sprawling several times. Each time he stood and ran on without looking back. He remembered what his father had told him when he was eighteen, just about to go off on an army training day for charity and faced with the prospect of a two-hundred-foot cliff abseil. “Don’t look down.” Logical advice, obvious, so self-evident that no one else had actually said it to him. It had worked. For two hundred feet he’d stared at a rock face three feet in front of him, no danger of falling, no fear of heights. There was only one time, when he looked sideways, that he was aware of the terrible danger he was in: he could see across the treetops to distant hills, a few multi-colored specks far, far down, people hustling about on another abseil.

  Then back at the cliff face. Looking at something so close made far-off things seem less dangerous.

  Dan slipped again, fell hard on his side and lay there, exhausted. Pain came from everywhere. He couldn’t even tell whether or not he was still on the path. He turned onto his back and looked up, blinking rapidly as snowflakes tangled themselves in his eyelashes, feeling suddenly claustrophobic and hemmed in by the snow. It was keeping him from his family. It had him trapped.

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  He closed his eyes to the danger and remembered the cliff face, and when he opened them again Brand was staring down at him.

  “Cold,” Brand said.

  “You…”

  “It’s cold. You’ll freeze.”

  Dan tried to sit up but Brand put a foot on his chest and pushed him back down.

  “I could hold you here,” the tall man said. “Stay for a few hours, let the snow cover you and drown you. Hold you under.” He smiled, put on a high-pitched voice. “And he loves me.”

  Dan wanted to rage at him, hurt him, struggle out from beneath his foot and fight. But all his strength had gone. He’d looked sideways and seen the fear, and now he had to contend with it at last. No chance of glancing away from this danger. No way to pretend it didn’t exist. “Why us?” was all he could say.

  Brand bent down, putting more weight on his foot and crushing Dan’s chest.

  Dan gasped for breath and breathed in a mouthful of snow. He coughed, had to wait until the snow had melted before he could swallow it and suck in a breath.

  The tall stranger-name known, scarred face known, but still a stranger-leaned over Dan and shielded him from the snow; blocking out the light, too, causing his own little eclipse. Then he smiled. His bad eye screwed horribly shut. “That’s for you to find out,” he said. He looked up, frowning, as if trying to see something further in the woods. “Snow’s getting heavier. Megan’s getting madder. Nikki’s getting…” He

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  looked down at Dan and smiled, licking his lips with a dry tongue that looked blue in the fading light. “… sexier.”

  Dan struggled, twisted and turned, eventually throwing Brand’s foot from his chest. But as he stood and watched Brand disappear between the trees and into the snow, finding a darker place than most to stroll towards, he knew that the stranger had allowed him up.

  “Come here!” Dan screamed. “Come back and face me like …” A man, he wanted to say. Come back and face me like a man. But it all sounded so wrong.

  He looked down at the snow layer hiding the forest floor. Brand’s footprints led away between the trees, evenly spaced, perfectly formed, no hint of slipping or panic around their edges. Dan set his foot in the first print and found it fit perfectly. He followed three or four more, falling into his own pace, finding that Brand had taken the route of least resistance between the trees.

  He followed. There was no need to look up and check his surroundings. He didn’t even glance across at the three fallen trees to his left. He felt no surprise when the path led him across the little bridge over the stream.

  He knew where Brand was going.

  Soon, he would be home.

  The footprints ended at the edge of the woods. They had not been obliterated by the snow, although now it was falling heavier than Dan had ever seen. They were still almost fresh, their edges only slightly blurred by fresh flakes, so

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  Brand could not be far away. Rather, they were lost. There was a confusion of prints, Brand’s trail leading into what looked like a crossingpoint for the forest animals: deer hoofs; a dog’s paw prints; a hundred tiny bird marks; even something that looked like the trail a sidewinder would leave in the desert sand. Brand’s prints simply led into this mess and did not emerge again.

  Across the field, Dan could just make out a dull splash of light; the outside light above his front door. Just up from this there was an even weaker yellow smudge in the curtains of snow; the bathroom light.

  Megan and Nikki.

  He wished it didn’t feel as if Brand had led him here.

  Cold, weak, head aching, neck sore, the snow on his clothes bloodied from where he was cut and scraped by his falls, Dan staggered out into the blizzard and toward his family home.

  Megan was leaning against the basin, watching her daughter writhe in the bath whilst muttering the name of the demon that had come to take them all, when she heard the noise downstairs.

  Someone was banging on the fr
ont door.

  After her recent shouting, Nikki’s crying, the smashing window and then the brief period of silence interrupted only by Nikki’s sighs, the sound was louder than ever. The snow seemed to insulate noises inside the house, blanketing the whole landscape, keeping out any sound not relevant. Everything she could hear was part of

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  the nightmare unfolding around her. There was a secret rustling in the attic above her head. Another spy …

  The banging again, louder and faster this time. Megan backed out of the bathroom and looked over the banister at the front door. There was a shape behind it, pressed against the glass with its hands shielding its face to see in.

  It was Dan. It should have been Brand-all her fear told her that was so, all logic dictated it-but she could see even from here that it was her husband. Come back to help her, again, at last.

  Perhaps he would be in time.

  Nikki cried out then. So did Megan, but for vastly different reasons.

  Megan ran downstairs, checking each tread for signs of a small animal to trip her, a carpet gnawed by one of Brand’s rats, a snail sacrificing itself to send her slipping on its crushed insides … and all the way she muttered under her breath: “One more step, God, one more step, God, one more step …”

  Jesus saw her through. She reached the front door, threw back the bolts and swept it wide open.

  Dan fell in. He was shaking uncontrollably, his hands were bloody, filth and dead leaves clung to the exposed skin of his face. His eyes were wide, too, and they were all him. She scanned his face quickly to see whether there were any insects on the dirt. He stared at her. She wondered just what he’d seen in the couple of hours he had been gone.

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  For a terrible second Megan thought that he was dead.

  “Dan!” she said. “My Jesus, what happened to him?”

  Dan wondered who his wife was talking to. He tried to look around to see if there was anyone else in there with them-Brand, she’s talking to Brand-but the warm air in the house hit his cold skin and sent him shivering and shaking, so badly that Megan could not even hold him upright. She released him and let him slip back to the floor. He managed to haul his legs in so that she could slam the door. He watched her turn to look at him, forming her question again, and then he saw the bruise on her hand and a scratch on her face, several buds of blood blooming along its length.

  “Where’s Nikki?” he asked through chattering teeth.

  “Upstairs,” Megan said, unable to say more of what had to be said. Upstairs masturbating at the memory of that unholy bastard, abusing herself as he has abused her already… it didn’t bear thinking about, let alone verbalizing. She knelt by Dan’s side and reached out to hold him.

  Her hands were hot on his skin, so hot that they hurt. He flinched away. She looked at him strangely, his eyes, staring into his eyes like she never had before, leaning forward to actually look deep into his pupils, moving to one side so that reflected light from the landing window fell on his face.

  “What?” Dan said. “Megan, what the fuck…?”

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  “You’re Dan,” she said.

  He shivered again, and not simply from the cold. “Megan, where is he? Where’s Brand? Is he here, does he have Nikki, is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  She stood, strode to the base of the staircase and shouted. “He has Nikki all right, don’t you, you bastard! He has Nikki, he’s had Nikki, and … she won’t let him go!”

  Dan pushed himself up on his elbows. “Megan, don’t say that. Megan?”

  She turned and although she had seen only Dan in Dan’s eyes, she raised her hand to strike him. Dan shielded his face. She lowered her hand again, slowly, realizing not what she had done but knowing what she must do.

  Nikki was corrupted. She was tainted with his evil, touched by his grimy hands and thoughts. “He’s been at her, Dan,” she said. “We have to do something … to help … her.” Her tears came then, hot and plentiful.

  Dan had never thought he’d be happy to see Megan cry. It was the most human thing she’d done all day. He crawled to her, his shaking subsiding under the need to comfort his wife. He held her in his arms and that made him feel strong once more. Strong enough to tell her.

  “Brand’s dangerous. I think he killed Jazz and buried him in a field. I crashed the Freelander. He was there, he distracted me, chased me through the woods … talked to me … and I followed him here.” He held her at arms length and tried to stare at her, but tears blurred her eyes. “Megan. Has he been inside?”

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  “His minions watch us, yes,” she said, sniffing. “They’re here. They’ve always been here. And they always will be.”

  Dan noticed the smashed landing window. “What happened up there?”

  “He was staring in,” Megan said slowly, as if talking to a child. Dan looked scared and cold and dirty, but that shouldn’t make him stupid. If he’d opened himself to Jesus as she had he would not retain this damned innocence, this belief that there was simply good and bad, not purity and utter evil. Megan loved pure, she worshipped it, but she had never, ever had a taste of real evil. Not until now. And Dan still could not see it.

  “It’s the first floor,” Dan said. “Was he up a ladder?” Can he fly? He almost added, but the crazy idea disturbed him far more than it should have.

  “Watching us through his familiars,” she said. “He has been ever since we gave him a lift, since the footprints-“

  “He’s just a sick fuck,” Dan said, suddenly desperate for Megan to recognize this. As long as she thought that Brand was something more than human-something in the vicinity of God and the devil-she was useless, wrapped up in her own wild thoughts. And, he thought, it made him distinctly unsettled.

  “Megan, the police, Brady should have called the police and sent them here. Have they called? Have they been?”

  “Only God’s laws stand any-“

  “Megan, he killed Jeremy.” He watched his wife as the words slowly sank in. Her face

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  seemed to relax, losing its tense edges, a hint of the craziness bleeding away as she turned pale.

  “Then we have to kill him,” she said.

  Dan stood, shaking his head, the ache in his neck turning into a hot throb as he did so. His extremities were tingling as he warmed up and his circulation improved, and he realized for the first time just how much he’d been cut and bruised during his race through the woods. The mud on his hands would not dry because of the blood soaking it. “Police,” he said, and went for the phone.

  “Dad?” Nikki had heard her parents arguing and slowly, slowly, she’d raised herself from the bath. Her heart hammered but she was at peace. Her breathing raced but her breath tasted sweet, there were no such things as staleness or stress. She felt drained, her legs shook, everything around her glowed with a pleasant hue, a postcoital fuzz which she’d only ever experienced before on her own. Now she was living it with Brand. She could still feel his fingers down there, a recent memory made hot by her. She could feel his lips around her nipples, though they were dry. She closed her eyes where she stood on the landing and she could see his face. No smile there … no real smile had ever touched those eyes, because he was so content inside that there was no need to display it to the world … but his expression was full of love. He loved her. That’s why nothing else mattered.

  “Nikki, what’s wrong honey?” her dad called up.

  “Nothing,” she said, opening her eyes and

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  staring down into the hallway. Her father was covered in mud, he was bleeding, her mother looked mad and devastated and drained … but Brand loved her, his memory whispered silent nothings of her own imagining, and little else mattered.

  “Nikki.” Dan did not know what else to say, whether he should tell her about Jeremy, warn her about Brand. If Megan was right and Brand had been at their daughter he should be watching her now, quizzing her and making sure the basta
rd wasn’t loose in the house. Ensuring his family was safe … there were his footprints after all, disappearing at the edge of the woods, and that was only two hundred steps from the house. If he was not already here he must be outside right now.

  Nikki started downstairs. She needed a drink. She wanted to tell her mum that everything was all right. Brand was just a guy, that was all. Older than Jazz, maybe, and a little more mysterious, more … adult. But just a guy.

  “He’s not just a guy, Mum,” she muttered as she reached the hallway, frowning as she tried to remember what she’d just said.

  “He’s evil!”

  “You stay away from him, Nikki!” Dan said.

  Nikki had never been a stroppy teenager. Headstrong and self-aware maybe, but her parents were generally understanding and quite liberal about most things-although her mum’s God hang-up caused friction sometimes-and arguments about going out and other “growing up things” had materialized only irregularly. But now … how dare they!

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  “How dare you!” Nikki said. “I’m seventeen! I can see who I like.”

  ” ‘See’?” Megan said. “I saw you in the bath, doing what you were doing, you dirty little slut! You’ve been doing more than just seeing him, haven’t you, that bastard? He’s been watching me, but he’s been … fucking you!”

  “I’ve never fucked him!” Nikki screamed, immediately wishing she hadn’t. She should have agreed with her mother, made her think that she and Brand had made love, that would teach the religious bitch something, make her think her little girl had been done by the tall dark scarred stranger. But his scar wasn’t that bad, was it? Why did that feature so strongly when she thought of him, that thin, white scar?