by Adam Millard
The fruit—apples, pears, bananas, peaches, grapes, all perfectly formed and reflecting a light-source which didn’t exist anywhere else in the room—was wholly appealing, even though it wasn’t real, and Luke knew it wasn’t real.
This is a dream, he kept reminding himself.
And yet, just because it was a dream, did that mean he had to starve? Did that mean he should ignore the fruit his mind had put out for him?
The mind works in mysterious ways. What if that fruit bowl was his only chance of recovery, and the eating thereof would see him rise from the ashes like a Phoenix, ready to soar again over the houses and treetops of London?
What if the fruit was poisoned, and the eating of just one piece sent his recuperating body into a coma? Would Karen visit with their daughter? Would she change his soiled nappies, massage his seized-up limbs, read to him his favourite poets? Would Lydia grow into a woman while he lay there, cabbaged, unable to comprehend the world still moving all around him?
Luke decided not to eat the fruit.
“Ghuul.”
Luke turned around, but it was like moving through water and took wholly longer than it should have. There, sitting upon a wooden bench which hadn’t been there a moment ago, was his daughter. She looked so happy, so innocent, and in her hand, she held her favourite dolly, Katie.
“Lydia,” Luke said, moving across the room towards her. “What are you doing here? You shouldn’t be here. Where’s your mother?”
Lydia giggled. Even though her voice was tiny, it seemed to echo around the brick chamber. For a moment, Luke was angry. There was nothing funny about what he had said, nothing remotely giggle-worthy about leaving an eight-year-old girl to go off a-wandering. But then Luke remembered that this was just a dream, that Lydia was probably at home, in her own bed, sleeping well and entirely unaware of what had happened to him.
“Does your mother know about the accident?” Might as well play along, Luke thought.
Lydia nodded. “She said you were probably speeding; probably drunk, too. Were you, Daddy? Were you drink-driving?” She looked solemn, disappointed in him.
“No, sweetie!” Luke said, dropping to one knee so that he was level with her. He took her by the hand—it was like ice—and said, “Daddy doesn’t do things like that, despite what your mother tells you.”
“She’s on her way to the hospital right now,” said Lydia. “To see you. She’s very upset, Daddy. She dropped me off at Inderjeet’s house, which sucks because I really wanted to see you.”
“You’re seeing me right now,” Luke reminded her, but she wasn’t, really. The dream was so vivid, Luke had to keep reminding himself it wasn’t real. Lydia wasn’t here right now talking to him; Karen wasn’t rushing to the hospital to be at his bedside. They were both at home, oblivious. Karen was still angry with him for what he had tried to do.
If anything, Luke thought, it was the police who would be on their way, if they were not already waiting outside his room for him to waken so they could slap the cuffs on him and drag him off to wherever it was you went for attempted murder.
Prison.
“Ghuul,” Lydia said, her lips curling into a tiny smile.
“You keep saying that,” Luke said, “but what does it mean?”
Lydia laughed, and there was nothing cute about it. In fact, Luke shuddered. “He’s coming back, Daddy,” she said. “He’s coming back and he’s going to make you pay.”
“Who?” Luke said. “Who’s coming back, sweetie?” But he already knew the answer. This was quickly turning into a nightmare; his subconscious was toying with him. The Ice Cream Man’s sudden reappearance was sending him crazy.
“You know who, Daddy,” Lydia said, the smile growing wider.
Luke nodded. Of course he knew. He was lying in a hospital bed, having this bad dream right now, because of the Ice Cream Man. He wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for that monster.
“He’s angry, Daddy,” Lydia said. “He’s angry with you for escaping him, you and your friends.” She began to comb the long blonde hair sprouting from Katie’s plastic head. “He is Ghuul, Daddy, and you’re going to wish you’d never crossed him.”
There came a strange hissing noise from behind, and when Luke turned, he saw the fruit on the table beginning to rot like so many deflating balloons. Flies punched out through the putrid fruit flesh, took to the air in swarms.
Lydia was laughing now, as if this were a show put on merely to entertain her.
The flies still came, a thick dark fog in the air above the decaying fruit bowl, the incessant droning enough to drive even the sanest man to the brink of madness.
“He’s waking up…”
Luke began to swat at the flies, trying to keep them away from his daughter, who was once again nonchalantly brushing her dolly’s hair as if nothing untoward was happening. The brick walls on all four sides began to break apart; cement crumbled down like water from a burst pipe. The whole thing was going to come crashing down.
And still the flies buzzed.
“Luke? Luke? Hold him down…”
The fruit was now nothing more than blackened pulp; the glass bowl in which it sat exploded, showering shards of crystal down upon Luke and his daughter. Flies were attacking now, and Luke could not keep them off. There were simply too many.
Ghuul.
“Luke, wake up…”
Who is that? Luke thought, of the voice that he kept hearing. It sounded familiar. A man’s voice he had heard many times before.
“Don’t fight it, Daddy,” Lydia said. “And when he comes for you, let him have his way or this will never end.”
“NO!” Luke cried, his mouth now full of buzzing flies.
“Should we call a nurse?”
Luke spat out the flies, but there were more, and they began to fill him up, crawling and flying and creeping into every crack of his body. He could feel them within him, and he howled out in agony as more and more sought entry to his temple.
“I’m coming for you, Daddy,” said Lydia, only now it wasn’t Lydia at all. The Ice Cream Man looked incongruous and never more evil sitting in her place, combing the hair of his daughter’s favourite doll.
“NOOOOOO!”
“He’s awake! Luke! Calm down! Luke, you were just having a bad dream! Luke!”
* * *
Luke bolted upright and immediately regretted it. His ribs were so sore, and his left leg throbbed as if someone had placed it in a vice and turned the handle until it would go no further.
Hands.
Hands were holding him in place, easing him back down, and it took a long time for him to realise who the hands belonged to.
“It’s okay, Luke,” Karen said. “Everything is going to be okay. Please, just lie down. The nurse is on her way.”
“Ka… Karen?” Lydia in the dream had been right; his wife had come to visit him at the hospital. Just another subconscious/unconscious trick, he thought. He must have heard Karen’s voice; must have known she would be here when he opened his eyes. That’s what it was.
“You’re going to be okay,” Karen told him, leaning in and kissing him lightly on the forehead. “Just try to relax, yeah?”
“Should I go?” It was the voice Luke thought he recognised, the one he had heard in the dream, and when Karen moved back, Luke saw the man standing there between the bed and the door.
“Marcus?” It was! It was Marcus, his old friend come to visit him. Shit, how bad was this?
“Long time, mate,” Marcus said, forcing a smile. He hissed a little, as if even that small gesture pained him.
“What… what are you doing here?”
Marcus stepped closer to the bed, seemed to ask Karen for permission to speak—she nodded, Go right ahead—and said, “Who’d have thought it would take a car crash to get the old team back together, huh?”
Confused, and still seeing things through blurred vision, Luke said, “You were there?”
“There?” Marcus laughed. “I was just min
ding my own business when you came bolting out of that street. You think your car’s a write-off? Mine’s still sticking out of some poor old couple’s living-room. Had that BMW less than a month, so you owe me forty-two grand, unless you’re not as dumb as I think you are, and you were insured up to the hilt.”
“He’s just joking, Luke,” Karen said, her smile warming his rapidly beating heart. “He said he was going to say that to you when you came around. Said you’d appreciate the joke.”
“He was damn right,” Luke said.
Was this really happening? Could this be just another bad dream? The last one had started off just as pleasantly, before turning into something Lynchian. Had he really crashed into Marcus, the friend he hadn’t seen in almost thirty years? What were the odds? And if so, what was Marcus doing back in Havering?
The same as you, Luke thought.
He knows what’s coming.
“Get some rest, buddy,” Marcus said, placing a huge hand on top of Luke’s. No wonder he was so good at boxing, Luke thought. His hands were like shovels, could knock out a gorilla, if they connected just right. “I’m going back to my bed. Those nurses are giving me shit about keep wandering off the ward. I think they just know how famous and important I am, and they don’t want to have to explain to the press how it is a champ can simply disappear from St. George’s.” He was joking, of course. Luke had seen hundreds of interviews on the TV over the years; Marcus channelled Ali as best he could, right down to the ego. You had to take everything Marcus said with a pinch of salt, otherwise you’d think he was a complete dick.
“Talk later, mate,” Luke said. And just before Marcus reached the door, he said, “Sorry about your Beemer. I’ll buy you a new one when I get out of here. You take cheques?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Marcus said, pushing the door open and stepping through it. Without even breaking his stride, he said, “I’ve got three more of them.” And then he was gone, and the door was whispering slowly shut behind him.
I’ll be damned, Luke thought. Marcus Berry. And it was real, too. He knew that now. This wasn’t a dream; this was fate.
Bringing them together.
Bringing Karen here to see him today so that they could work through their problems. They had so much to figure out; Luke didn’t know where to begin.
“Karen, about what happened—”
“Don’t,” Karen said, pulling a chair up to the bed and sitting down. “Just rest, okay? That’s all that matters right now.”
Luke nodded. Karen was right; this was no place to talk about what had happened, what he had almost done to their daughter. That conversation would come in time, but not now.
The machines continued to beep and whir, the nurses and doctors came and went, and Luke slept fitfully as Karen sat watching.
SEVENTEEN
October 28th, 2016,
Redbridge, London
Wood read the article one more time before handing the printout back to Tom, a grave expression worrying his countenance. “Why didn’t I know about this?” he said, more to himself than to Tom. “I’ve been looking into this damn case since you were twelve-years-old. You show up and, an hour at the library later, you’re all caught up.”
Tom shrugged. “I had help from Margaret Banks,” he said. “You know, she’s surprisingly good with technology.”
“That Frederick White stuff, it all happened the year before your friend went missing.” Wood swallowed half his pint down in one thirsty gulp before setting the glass down on the table and continuing. “One year exactly, according to the article. If this is the guy we’re looking for—”
“If?” Tom said. “You think there’s any chance it’s not White?” He placed the printout down on the table, spun it so it was the right way up for Wood, and pointed at the vehicle being pulled from the Thames. “See? Same yellow-and-white ice cream truck. Unless there’s another vengeful ghost out there, driving around in an identical truck, I don’t think we even have to consider the possibility that Frederick White is not our guy.”
Even though he had examined the picture closely several times already, Wood leaned in and took another look. “It is, isn’t it,” he said. “This is the truck I saw outside the school that night. The night Cheryl Mitchell went missing.”
“Only when you saw it,” Tom said, “it wasn’t real.” This was all getting a little confusing; Wood’s frown prompted Tom to explain what he meant. “This truck, the one in the photograph, was probably crushed years ago, even before Ryan was taken. I’m guessing, as evidence, it wasn’t much use, so wouldn’t they just scrap the thing, rather than keep it impounded indefinitely?”
“They would have squashed it,” Wood said. “They must have. There’s no way that thing would have been kept in an impoundment for thirty years. No way.”
“So, the van doesn’t even exist, not really, just like Frederick White doesn’t exist, at least not as anything we can possibly understand.” Tom took out a cigarette and was about to light it right there in the pub before realising, at the last second, the law had changed years ago. That’s how much this was all getting to him; he’d forgotten simple things, like the fact you could no longer smoke indoors in public spaces. He took it from his mouth and tucked it behind his ear.
“So, you’re saying the truck is a ghost, too?” Wood said.
“I think it’s an extension of White,” Tom said. “He died in that vehicle, his daughter screaming beside him as it filled up with water and sank to the bottom of the river.”
“And now he’s taking a new child every seven years, for what?” Wood said. “Nobody killed his daughter. He was responsible for what happened to her, not the Fieldings, or the Mitchells or the Poulsons… it was his fault—”
“He was chased into the river by your boys,” Tom said. “All blues and sirens, going after him hard, and for what? Because he’d had an argument with his missus and had decided to leave with his daughter?”
“That counts as kidnap, whether you’re the kid’s parent or not,” Wood said.
“Point being, he shouldn’t have died there that day. His daughter—Isobel—shouldn’t have died there that day, and now he’s back, and he’s just going to keep on coming until…” He trailed off there, because he didn’t know how they were going to stop this sonofabitch. The Ice Cream Man, Frederick White, Ghuul? “So, what’s with the book?” Tom said, of the hefty tome sitting in the front basket of Wood’s mobility scooter. “Think it has something do with White?”
Wood shrugged. He took the book out of the basket and began to flick through it. “I’ve been looking into this stuff for so long now, I’m starting to feel like I should have my own show. You know? Just me, wheeling myself around apparently haunted buildings, screaming every time I run into a cobweb or the wind picks up outside.”
“You’re no Yvette Fielding,” Tom said.
The reference seemed to be lost on Wood, who, Tom thought, probably didn’t even own a TV set, just sat there in his one-bed flat staring at the pictures Sellotaped to his walls, trying to figure shit out. “This is the closest thing I could find on our ghost, or demon, or whatever the fuck it is.” He searched for a specific page in the book and, when he located it, handed it over to Tom.
There, on the page, was a crude sketch of what appeared to be Ghuul, Eater of Children. All abs and fangs, axe clutched in one hand and the decapitated head of some unfortunate soul in the other. Tom wasn’t sure how serious Wood was being with this. “Doesn’t look like the thing I saw,” he said. Or the thing that keeps showing up when I least expect it.
“Ghuul takes whatever form it needs to,” Wood said. “All it needs is a tragedy and a willing receptacle.”
“And the tragedy in this case,” Tom said, “would be Frederick White steering him and his daughter into the Thames.”
Wood nodded. “Just a theory,” he said, “but if what we’re dealing with here is Ghuul, then we’re fucked. And I don’t just mean ‘up Shit Creek without a paddle’ fucked. I m
ean ‘might as well roll over and die right now’ fucked.”
Tom sighed. “The Children-Eater?” he said. “Is that what this thing does?”
Wood took the book back and began to flick through it, although what he was looking for, Tom didn’t know. “Not in a literal sense,” he said. “It’s more of a figurative thing. From the small amount of research I’ve been able to do on this thing—you have no idea how difficult it is to find stuff on this bastard—the Ghuul needs somewhere to take the children, a netherworld, a realm beyond our own, and it’s there that he keeps them, devouring their souls over many years.” The way he spoke, so matter-of-factly, was almost as frightening to Tom as the concept of the Ghuul itself.
“What are we talking about here?” Tom said. “Torture? Abuse? Cannibalism?”
“From what I understand, none of the above,” Wood said, which came as a relief to Tom. That his friend had suffered so inordinately at the hands of this creature was too much to contemplate. “This world, an infinitesimal distance from our own—a gnat’s bollock away, to be more precise—drains the children, leaves them paralysed, fighting to survive, and it’s a fight they are destined to lose. Just being there is all it takes; it’s a world created for one thing, and one thing only. The consumption of souls. It literally sucks the life out of a person, only over an extended amount of time. Years, decades, centuries…” He trailed off there, and Tom was grateful for it. This was all too much to absorb in one sitting, and Tom couldn’t help feeling as though he hadn’t yet taken enough alcohol on board to even consider the possibility that Ryan Fielding was still being tapped of his essence right now, even after all these years.
“Can I read that when you’re done with it?” It wasn’t Tom’s usual subgenre—child-devouring Babylonian gods didn’t appeal to him the same way Terry Pratchett novels did—but if Wood was right, and this was the creature they were going up against, then it made sense to learn as much as they could about it, find out its weaknesses, if indeed it has any, and figure out a way to ultimately stop it from transporting more minors to its soul-sapping world, wherever that might be.
