by Tim Lebbon
Dan did the only thing he could do. Instinct took over and brought his left hand up in a warding-off gesture, his right hand pivoting him on the ground ready to roll away if he had the chance.
He did not. His hand was held palm-up, his fingers splayed, when the bat struck it. He heard bones crunch-he had a brief image of snapping a handful of twigs over his knee-and felt three of his fingers snap back, fingertips touching his wrist. Pain drove down from his hand, through his wrist, forearm, elbow and finally into his shoulder, jarring all the way as his arm was driven way down by his side. Brand lifted the bat away and Dan fell onto his back, hand held as far away as possible to lessen the chance of contact.
“So frail,” Brand said. He stepped forward and stood over Dan, swinging the bat back and forth above his face, a deadly pendulum sinking lower with every arc. “Look at you. I can never figure the ease with which you give in. All of you. It only takes a moment…”
“You leave my family alone,” Dan hissed, pain giving his voice a hard, desperate edge he had never heard before. It did not perturb Brand in the slightest.
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“Or what? Really Dan, just look at yourself. Lying in the snow, crying like a child-you are crying, you know, I can see the tears, they’ll freeze on your face when your blood turns cold-and in the space of five seconds you could be dead. Imagine that. You’ve lived your whole life as best you can, you’ve looked out for your family … well, most of the time. You’ve made your friends, choices and mistakes. You strive constantly to better yourself-and I have to tell you, Dan, that sometimes there is no better in you-and you have a nice house. Really. A nice family, too.” Brand was looking up now, staring off into the snow as if contemplating something in the distance. “And with a couple of blows I could empty your head across the snow and you’d be nothing. A lump of warm meat rapidly growing cold. Your history and memory freezing on the ground, if the birds don’t peck them up first. And you know the worst thing?” He rested the curved head of the bat in the hollow of Dan’s throat and squatted down above him, his face within six inches of Dan’s. “The worst thing is that your wife and daughter won’t know you’re dead until somebody tells them.”
Dan tried to shift, to nudge Brand away, but every movement pulled the bat tighter into his throat. The pain in his hand made it difficult to keep still. He thought, I’m going to die.
Brand stood again and slung the bat over his shoulder. “You work so hard to impress yourself on other people, but you only ever really, really matter to yourself.” Then he stood back two
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steps and brought the bat down in a high arc onto Dan’s left knee.
Dan screamed. It was high-pitched and out of control, and the snow seemed to echo it back at him. He sucked in a breath to scream again, but the pain, the shock had winded him. He could only squirm in the snow, trying not to touch down his hand or shift his knee but doing both in the blindness of agony.
“That’ll do for now,” Brand said, and he walked off into the storm.
Dan screwed his eyes shut and tried to keep still. The pain made him squirm and every movement increased it, so the only recourse was to scream. Snow fell into his open mouth and ran down his tongue like spiders. It pattered into his eyes when he opened them, filled his ears where he twisted on the ground, found its way into his clothing and laid cool caresses across his skin. He was hot from the pain, sweating, and that made him colder. Even with his eyes closed tight, everything was white.
His knee was smashed. He’d felt it disintegrate when the bat struck, a sick, slipping feeling as bone parted and flesh gave way. His whole leg was on fire. He managed to raise himself enough to look down at the leg of his jeans, to see how bad it was. Snowflakes melted as they hit blood and helped it flow easier. The ground beneath him was turning pink. His hand was smashed too, and although somehow the skin had not been broken his fingers had, bent back at an angle too awful to view. It had already swelled to twice its normal size, the flesh puffing out to
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support the breaks, bruising turning his skin black. He sat up carefully, holding all his weight on his right arm until he was sitting fully, groaning and whining through clenched teeth as his leg shifted slightly. Touching the left side of his head with his right hand was harder than he’d thought, but when it came away glistening with fresh blood he wished he hadn’t bothered. What he’d felt there was entirely the wrong shape.
His left side was broken and bleeding. He felt sick. Vision blurred and danced before him as a sudden faint chilled his pain-hot body.
Brand had left him alive. That’ll do for now, he’d said, and here he was, alive.
Then the agony let the cold through once more, and Dan realized that he would very definitely die out here if he didn’t help himself now. Fainting would give him to the cold. Lying back and waiting for the pain to fade would do the same.
As logic marshalled itself once more he thought of Megan and Nikki. Remembered why he’d come out here in the first place. Realized just where Brand must be heading.
The Wilkinsons’ open front door was several steps away. They had a phone.
He would have to crawl.
“God loves you, Nikki. Not him. Not that devil.” Nikki had locked her bedroom door. The lock was so old that Megan had forgotten it existed, they must have painted over it twice since they’d lived here. They were normally a very open family, or so she thought. Open and trusting. Well,
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maybe. She knew that was not the case with her-she was aware of her own truths shielded from the world, and especially from Dan and Nikki-but generally they were quite free with each other. No need to hide anything. No need for locks on doors.
“Nikki, please, open the door honey. Your dad’s gone to call the police, they’ll be here soon, there’s nothing to worry about.” She felt tears coming on again but fought them back. They would distort her voice and Nikki would hear, and Megan did not want to frighten her. That bastard had already touched her. She must be scared enough.
Didn’t look scared in the bath, someone whispered in her own voice. Megan looked around and saw a mouse at the top of the stairs, staring at her as it sat on its hindquarters and cleaned its whiskers. Snow had layered the carpet from the smashed window, but the cold seemed not to disturb the calm rodent. “Piss off!” she hissed at it, hearing a sudden movement from behind Nikki’s bedroom door. She took off a shoe and threw it, but it bounced past the mouse and tumbled downstairs.
“Nikki-“
“I’m not listening to you, Mum,” her daughter said. “I’m sitting on my bed and I’m thinking of him, because he loves me and he’s going to take me away. I’m not listening to you … swear all you want, beg God for help, He’s not listening. If He was why would he have made Dad run out on you again.”
“He has not run out!” She stared at the door
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and considered smashing this one in as well. But breaking down doors was not an answer, Megan knew that. There would always be another door to hide behind.
“What if Brand were to come back now and kill you, Mum?”
“I know that’s not Nikki talking!” Megan screamed, alternating her gaze between the closed door and the mouse on the landing … now joined by a spider, rushing across the snow-dappled carpet in rapid stops and starts. From the other direction, in her and Dan’s bedroom, something was scratching at the window asking to be let in.
Megan crawled along the landing and crushed the spider beneath her palm. She reached for the mouse but it hurried past her and disappeared into one of the two spare bedrooms.
“Mum,” Nikki said. “You’re not doing any killing out there, are you?”
“That is not Nikki,” Megan said. “That is not my daughter.”
Somebody banged on the front door. Megan gasped in relief. She looked through the banisters and saw Dan standing outside silhouetted against the snow, darkening the frosted glass with his shadow. She ran downstairs, seeing darting t
hings from the corner of her eye. She turned this way and that, trying to catch sight of them-feathery shapes fluttering above her head, slinky bodies slipping along skirting boards, black blurs scurrying across the timber floor-but whichever way she turned they
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seemed to elude her, moving just outside her field of vision.
The knocking came again, giving her an instant sense of deja vu, moving her out of the normal and into the abnormal. Usually she enjoyed deja vu, tried to perpetuate it by submitting to what it made her say, look at, do. Perhaps it took her nearer to God, because it gave her the idea that He was looking out for her, her life watched over beyond her ken. But not now. Now it scared her badly, because even though this all seemed so familiar-from little over an hour ago-there had been no fleeting shapes dancing at the extremes of her vision then. No surreptitious sounds from behind skirting boards and closed doors.
Had there?
Dan was slumped against the door now, the shadow of the baseball bat a dark exclamation mark against the white background.
Megan drew the bolts and flipped the catch, and too late she saw the shadow grow taller and wider as the door began to swing open. She tried to push it closed, but the baseball bat drove through and levered the door against her. She braced her feet against the floor, but there was no competition. When Brand decided the silly little game was over he threw the door open and Megan went tumbling.
“Get out!” she screamed. She glared at him, down at the bat-it was still dripping darkly-up again. “Where’s Dan?”
His eyes were full of a dark liquid mirth. His
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scars seemed to dance, but it may have been the light. “Who?”
“The police are on their way. He’s called the police and they’ll be here soon!”
“Well then,” Brand said closing and locking the door behind him. “I’ll have to be an inconsiderate lover and come first. No time to waste with niceties.”
Megan tried to stand but he was already there, twisting one hand into her hair and tugging until she slid to her side on the floor. He hauled her across the hallway, whistling all the way. There was no tune to his whistle, no discernible background or formation, but it made her skin crawl and drove her into a dark, Godless panic … a panic where there was no God, because how could He allow this? … a dark place where Brand’s tune inspired false memories of bad, bad times, where all the truths she tried so hard to believe in were mocked, shit upon, spat upon by this bastard because all truths were lies, life itself was a lie …
“Meet my friends,” Brand said. He pulled hard and Megan slid past him into the study.
She heard her scalp rip before the pain hit, a white-hot glaze over her whole skull that set her ears and neck aflame. It felt as if she’d been doused in acid. She went to scream but held back, closing her eyes, blocking out his face and opening herself up to God, using His love and her love for Him to temper the pain. She did not want to give Brand the satisfaction.
“Megan,” he said, clocking her on the head with the baseball bat. She winced, opened her
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eyes. He had blooded his cheeks with the clot of her scalp, and the blood moved. He glanced over her shoulder and nodded. “As I said … my friends.” The door shut on his smile and Megan turned to look behind her.
She gave in to the scream. Nothing could hold that back: faith in God; certainty in her love for Him; strength, strength from anywhere. Nobody was that strong.
The room was alive.
Nikki sat on her bed and stared out at the snow, seeing only white but imagining a lot more. She imagined the treeline, standing stark and dark from the snowfields and providing some sort of shelter for Brand. Because he would stand and watch her window, day in, day out, maybe forever, watch as she dressed and undressed for him, brushed her hair for him, stood naked at the window and turned slowly around for his attention. He would want her, she would feel the waves of lust heating the surface of the snow and sending it into a melt, a billion glittering diamonds of water simmering and then refreezing when Brand started to walk towards the house. It was all so romantic. How much must he love her to be out in this storm? How much must he really want her, to make him stay around after they’d given him a lift, watch her, follow her and make sure he could see her all the time? Romantic … even that time at the party, when his eyes had been hard and blank as he came … bad lighting in the cellar, perhaps, the light refracting through old bottles of wine to steal away his look
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of rapture. She had never let Jazz do that, but with Brand it seemed so natural, so pure, so clean. And now that Jazz was gone …
… gone …
A breath of cool air swept under her bedroom door and gave her goosebumps. Someone had just walked over her grave, her grandmother would have said. She’d been full of sayings. There were footsteps on the stairs, slow and heavy, certainly not her mother. She’d gone to answer the door and Nikki had sat back, resting on her hands, staring from the window, imagining Brand … and now it sounded as if he’d come for her.
She smiled and felt her skin prickling all over at the thought of him touching her. There was a sudden pain in her side, like a twinge of stitch, but she shifted and it faded. Her smile faltered slightly. She sat up straight and alert. The cool breeze under the door was still there. So were the footsteps. She tried to imagine Brand naked, his cock hard and ready to impale her, but try as she might she could not see lust in his expression, nor love, nor anything other than that bland mockery she’d seen before, the smile she’d tried to attribute to love but which in reality was little more than a passing interest.
No. He loved her. He did, and she’d make him love her more.
Perhaps now, this evening, he’d show her the brand he’d spoken of. And she would see what had been done to him.
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Chapter Sixteen
Dan lay on his right side in the snow. His arm was stretched along the ground above his head. The pain was so bad that he could not keep still between crawls, and he was afraid that he’d roll over onto his back, hit the ground with his ruined left leg and hand.
The snow was already four inches deep.
He’d made about six feet, if that. Halfway to the Wilkinsons’ front door. He tried focussing on that rectangle of light, but it was tainted by the sight of Frank’s body at its base and the bloody carpet beneath his head. Luckily he was facing into the house and away from the door, perhaps turning to look for his wife in those final moments. Dan was glad. He didn’t think he could stand Frank’s dead eyes watching his struggle.
He clawed his hand again, gritted his teeth and
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tried pushing with his right leg, shouting in pain but completing the movement because there was no other way. Pain was transitory, he’d read that somewhere, horrible at the time but functional, a biological warning that his body was damaged. In days or weeks he would not remember this pain, it would not matter, so he tried to deal with it like that. In a way, it was interesting. It wasn’t the pain actually damaging him. He’d already been damaged. Perhaps the cold helped, too. He could no longer feel the toes of either foot.
And he closed his eyes when he pushed to think of Megan and Nikki. He imagined Nikki being attacked by that bastard, pictured himself coming to her rescue and caving the fucker’s head in with the baseball bat, carrying Nikki away and soothing her and telling her everything was going to be all right. He did not allow thoughts of her enjoying Brand; any enjoyment was based on his lies, his deceits. Dan would lay his head open and let his smashed brain steam away all its corrupted ideas. And Megan, his lovely, disturbed wife … the only picture he could conjure was as he’d found her after the attack in the city. He would not see her like that again. He would reach her before that happened, he would defend her, stand in the way if needs must. Each day since then he’d hated himself a little more for not being there, even though Megan said she loved him just as much, she hadn’t blamed him, could
not blame him. It wasn’t her blame he was concerned about.
So thinking, Dan felt the Wilkinsons’ front doorstep against his fingertips. He grabbed on
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and pulled, kicking more with his right leg, accepting the pain by shouting and swallowing a mouthful of snow. His shoulder touched the sill and he rolled onto his front; it was the only way he could get in. His ruined left hand flopped uselessly in the snow and Dan tried to burrow it down, hoping the cold would numb shattered nerves and dull the pain.
Frank’s body lay just past the swing radius of the door. Dan saw that he could squeeze past it quite easily, but the old man’s blood had soaked into the carpet and spread in a large pool around him. He’d have to crawl through the blood to go in search of the phone. It just was not fair.
“Fuck this,” Dan whispered, his voice shockingly loud in the silence. He paused for a moment, listened, heard only the secretive hush of the heavy snowfall and a strange, electrical fizzing from somewhere in the house. “Myra?” he called. He did not expect an answer. “Myra?” One more try for luck, one more try, and perhaps he liked the sound of his own voice in this deathly, muffled silence. He glanced at Frank and tried not to see the damage to his head. Dan had never been close to the Wilkinsons-they never had each other around to dinner, nothing like that-but he’d helped the old man dig a soakaway in his garden the previous year, and he remembered the gent’s gentle disgust at the way the world was going, his mourning of older, simpler times. They’d shared some laughs and a few cool beers together, and now …
“Got to stand. Got to get the phone.” Dan gasped and grunted and swore, biting his lip until
