The October Boys

by Adam Millard

  “Is this her?” Wood bent down, picked up something next to the left wheel of his chair, and stared intently down at it.

  “Yeah, that was Isobel.” The use of past tense was not lost upon Tom. “She never got any older than in that photograph.”

  Tom could see the face of the little girl behind the glass in Wood’s hand. It was a school photograph—the kind every child has to sit for on a yearly basis—only there was no smile here, no real expression in the eyes. Isobel White had been left hollow by the actions of her father, the same way Laura White had. This girl was not happy; she merely existed.

  But not anymore.

  “I kept the pregnancy to myself for as long as I could. Frederick was out most of the day in the summer months, and luckily Isobel wasn’t due until Christmas, so it was easy. When the bump became too difficult to hide, I made sure my mother was with me when I broke the news to Frederick, that we were going to have a baby, that he was going to be a father. I was frightened, you see, that he’d be angry. I had visions of him just punching me, as hard as he could, in the stomach. To get rid of it.

  “My mother never suspected anything, other than I wanted her there when I surprised Frederick with what should have been good news. And Frederick took it well. I could see in his eyes that he was genuinely happy. We’d never talked about having a child, and we didn’t have intercourse—sex is such a disgusting word—that often, because Frederick often fell asleep in front of the TV, watching snooker. But, like I say, he took it well, and I was so relieved.”

  Tom and Wood listened carefully. Already Tom didn’t like where this was going.

  “When Isobel was born, I thought everything would be okay. Frederick had calmed down, somewhat, although I knew not to become complacent. He was always just one step away from a full-blown outburst, and now I didn’t just have to protect myself. We had a child, a daughter, and there was no way I would ever let him hurt her the way he hurt me.

  “I wasn’t ready for what happened next. Isobel’s second birthday should have been a happy occasion, but Frederick had had some kids run off with ice creams without paying, and so by the time he came home, he was already cranky. He tore down the banners I’d made, popped all the balloons, and threw all the food I’d prepared in the bin. I think that was the moment I knew he no longer liked children. He suffered them, at least that was how he now saw it, but he hated having to deal with them all day long. I guess it’s like any job, really. You spend all day delivering mail, you’re going to quickly despise being chased by angry dogs, or getting your fingers trapped in letterboxes.

  “Frederick now hated children, and we had one of our own. I never saw him do anything to Isobel—you have to understand that if I had, I would have been out there like a shot—but she was always crying, more often when Frederick was around, and I’ve never known a baby vomit so much. I’m not just talking about a bit of sick-up; she would really go for it. And diarrhoea, too. ‘She’s just doing baby stuff,’ was what Frederick said when I confronted him about it, but I wasn’t convinced and took Isobel to see a doctor.

  “Salmonellosis, they said. They asked me if Isobel had eaten any chicken in the last few days, chicken which might have been undercooked. I told them no, of course not, why would we be feeding our two-year-old baby undercooked chicken, but at the back of my mind, all I could picture was the bowl of legs and wings sitting in the freezer, covered over with clingfilm. Frederick had recently made friends with a local butcher, and so the fridge was always stocked to bursting with meat. I had to get rid of all my vegetables, just to make room, because every time he came home from work, he had another bag of stinking chicken or minced lamb.”

  “He was poisoning her?” Wood said then. “He was feeding Isobel raw chicken?”

  Laura nodded. Her lips were drawn tight; the circles surrounding her eyes seemed to have darkened in the short time they had been talking. “I didn’t have any proof, but from that moment on I didn’t let Isobel out of my sight. I took care of all the feeds, all the baths, everything, because I didn’t trust him with her. What kind of sick bastard tries to make his own child ill?”

  It happens more than you’d think, Tom thought but didn’t say. He had read about it somewhere—a magazine, perhaps, or newspaper article—and they even had a name for it. Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. Making a child ill to elicit sympathy or for financial gain.

  But that’s not what Frederick White had been trying to do.

  He was trying to kill her.

  His own daughter.

  Tom was sure of it.

  “When I asked Frederick not to bring any more meat home—we’d had to buy a chest freezer for the garage, just so none of it spoiled—he told me to mind my own damn business. ‘Don’t tell me what the fuck to do, you old witch,’ were his exact words. I could see he was on the brink once again, but you know what? It was in his eyes. He was looking for an excuse to kill me, even then. To kill us both. I’ve never seen such evil in a person before, and it terrified me.”

  “Why didn’t you get out of there?” Wood asked, adjusting his position. He was uncomfortable, and yet I was the one still standing, shifting from one foot to the other.

  “It wouldn’t have made a difference,” Laura said, her pained grin revealing two rows of shiny pink gums. “I thought about it. A lot. Just grabbing Isobel in the middle of the night and driving to my mother’s house—or just driving anywhere; that was better than spending another day in fear, not knowing whether Frederick was going to blow a fuse and put me in hospital again, or worse. Hurt her. Hurt Isobel.

  “Running wasn’t the answer. All I could do was safeguard, make sure Isobel didn’t get sick again, placate Frederick as best I could. That went on for five more years.” She shook her head, as if even she couldn’t quite believe she had survived that long, suffered for that long. “He had his moments. Bad days. Days the children called him names or swore at him. He tolerated it with them, but then came home to us, and it was us who suffered for those children, those kids that called him ‘creepy’ and ‘pervert’, just because of what he did for a living.

  “One thing I know is that Frederick White was not a pervert. He hated kids too much to want to do… that… to them, but I was still wary of him being alone with Isobel, not least because she was growing up to be a fine young girl.” She paused here, swallowed hard. Tom could see she was fighting back tears, and for the first time he felt as if they were intruders here, that they had no right to be asking her these things, asking her to recall old and terrible memories.

  “That day, the day it happened, I had been to my mother’s house with Isobel to discuss a trip Isobel was supposed to be going on with the school. Mom was strange, inasmuch as she didn’t understand how anyone could let their seven-year-old go off with a bunch of strangers—teachers and teaching assistants—for a weekend to some remote part of the country, and she’d always said that, when the time came, she would feel a lot better if she went along, too. I’d cleared it with the staff at Isobel’s school, who said they’d really appreciate the extra help, although my mother would have to take care of a small group of children, and not just Isobel. Mom said that was fine, so long as she was there, and to be honest I was glad she’d offered to go. I was working part-time at a bakery in town by that point, and there was no way they would let me take a Saturday off.

  “So, anyway, when we got back from my mother’s—Isobel and I—we started to pack. We even had a little checklist, and every time I read something out from the list, Isobel screamed ‘Check!’. It was… it was…” Once again, the sorrow and the anguish threatened to overpower her, and she broke the sentence off there before moving on to the next part.

  “When Frederick came home, I knew he’d had a bad day. I asked him whether the children had been giving him a tough time, and he said he wished he could kill them all. Every. Last. One of them. Then he saw Isobel packing her case, and I knew we were in trouble. I hadn’t told Frederick about the trip. I’d told my mother, but no
t Frederick. Lo and behold, he didn’t want Isobel to go, to be ‘surrounded by a bunch of paedophiles who were, apparently, taking our daughter out to the Forest of Dean for no other reason than to abuse her—and all the other children—and hope they got away with it.

  “Isobel was gutted, for she was really looking forward to the trip, especially now that grandma was going along, too. But Frederick had made up his mind, and that was that. She couldn’t go.”

  “But she went anyway,” Tom said. He knew how this ended, and he was starting to get a good idea of how they arrived there.

  “Frederick was at work,” Laura said. “There was no way I would let Isobel miss that trip. Her friends were all going, and she was so sad she couldn’t because ‘Daddy says so’. I had to drive fast, but we made the coach just before it left. Isobel was so happy that day. We both felt as if we had stood up to Frederick—my husband, her father—and that things would be different from now on.

  “The more things change, the more they stay the same. I took a beating that night. Boy, did I take a beating. Knocked out most of my teeth, see?” She smiled, but of course Tom and Wood had already seen her glistening gums. Tom had assumed they were missing through lack of proper dental hygiene, that Laura White had allowed her appearance to go the same way as the front garden. “The ones which weren’t knocked out that night fell out a couple of weeks later. Luckily, I couldn’t see how disgusting my mouth looked in the mirror; my eyes were all swollen up, and I couldn’t open them.

  “I took a beating that night, and most of the next day, right the way up until Isobel came through the door. Frederick made me sit there on a chair for three hours, just in front of the door so that I was the first thing Isobel saw when she came through it. The fact that my mother would be with her made no difference. Up to that point, my mom still believed the sun shone out of Frederick White’s arse, but after this, I knew things would never be the same again. That once my mother knew what he was truly like, once she saw what he had done to me, I would be able to leave him, to put an end to all this. Take Isobel to my mother’s, where we would live together while Frederick White went to prison for what he’d done to us.”

  Tom could feel the beginnings of a migraine, just beneath his right eye. It was a pain he had grown accustomed to over the years, but not one he ever anticipated. They just crept up on him, like middle-age.

  “As soon as Mom and Isobel came through the front door, Frederick was on them. He dragged Mom upstairs and left her lying unconscious in the bathroom. I was fighting back by that point, trying to get him to let go of Isobel, who was screaming and crying and not knowing what the hell was going on. She was still wearing her school book bag. Frederick punched me to get me off his back, and I was out for a few minutes. When I came to, I could hear that truck of his revving up in the garage. He’d even put the chimes on, and they were so damn loud, I thought I was going to go crazy.

  “I telephoned for the police before running out the front door to try to stop him from taking her, but… well, I think we all know how it ended.” She was crying now; salty tears rolled down her face, changing direction whenever they came across a new wrinkle. Her whole body seemed too tremble. Tom felt guilty, once again, for making her relive the nightmare of her daughter’s abduction and subsequent death.

  “We’re so sorry, Laura,” Tom said. Wood remained silent. Tom realised the old man was also teary-eyed. They glistened like polished orbuculum. Was Wood moved by the story, by Isobel’s sad demise and Laura’s terrible loss? Or was he thinking of other things? The other children (Ryan, and Cheryl, and Harvey, and Rochelle)?

  “Why now?” Laura shook her head. “Why, after all these years?”

  Tom knew what she meant; why, after all these years, have you two appeared from nowhere, interested in how my bastard husband kidnapped and subsequently murdered our daughter?

  “You said Frederick is somehow connected to a bunch of missing kids, even though he’s been dead for three decades?”

  Wood leaned forward in his chair, sighing deeply. “Not just connected, Laura. Directly responsible for.”

  Tom jumped in and jumped in fast. “Laura, did your husband—”

  “Ex-husband.”

  “—ex-husband… did he ever get into anything strange just before he died?”

  Frowning, Laura said, “Like what? Frederick was always strange, always doing things I didn’t understand, or didn’t want to understand.”

  “Supernatural stuff?” Wood said, and then quickly shook his head, for that wasn’t quite the right word. “Occult stuff.”

  Without hesitation, Laura nodded frantically, grinning that spit-glistening pink gum smile which reminded Tom of the hag-villainess from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. “Oh, he was always into that stuff.” She waved a hand dismissively through the air, parting the smoke from her cigarette like a geriatric Moses. “Used to bang on about it all the time, regardless of whether Isobel was in the room or not.”

  Tom glanced at Wood, and Wood glanced back. Wood had been right; this was some sort of occult invocation gone awry. “Laura?” Tom said, turning his attention back to the frail woman, old before her years, sitting opposite. “Did he ever mention the word Ghuul?”

  Laura shrugged. “I mean, he might have, I don’t rightly know. He was always babbling on about demons and death. I should have known when that shit started to pack up and leave. No one wants to be married to someone who thinks they’re some kind of… Anton Lafayette, or whatever his goddamn name was.”

  LaVey. Tom was familiar with the name, had stumbled across plenty of websites about the occultist.

  “I just thought it was another one of Frederick’s phases, something else he would get over, once the novelty wore off, like when he started fishing over at Redbridge Lakes—that one only lasted a couple of weeks; cost him a fortune in equipment, too, and then it was all over as quick as it started—but it never did. The novelty never did wear off. He used to come home with library books, things that sent shivers up my spine, and he’d read them so fast, it was like he couldn’t possibly learn enough.” She cackled. “I daren’t ask him why he needed to learn all that weird stuff. Why he wanted to know all about demons and angels. He was an Ice Cream Man, for crying out loud. It made no sense to me.”

  It was all falling into place. Frederick White had not only read the books he’d taken out from the library; he’d made them his life’s work. He had somehow become immortal, the only caveat that he must return to the world of the living every seven years for a fresh soul to sustain him in his netherworld, until the next time…

  Tom’s legs were growing tired, and the stench of the place—thick with a fug from the old woman’s chain-smoking habit—made him want to leave now that they had what they had come for. “Thank you, Laura,” he said. “We won’t take up any more of your time.”

  “So what happens now?” Laura stood, and Tom thought he heard every bone inside the woman’s body creak and crack as she did so.

  “We have to look into a few things,” Wood said, wheeling himself steadily, cautiously, backwards out of the cluttered and filthy living-room. By the time he reached the hallway he looked exhausted, and Tom pitied the man, for he was no spring chicken himself.

  Tom opened the door and pushed Wood out through it. They still had the overgrown front garden to work through, and once again Wood allowed Tom to do the hard work. Tom didn’t care. Out here the air was fresh, at least until they reached the street and Tom lit up a cigarette of his own.

  “You were right,” Tom told Wood. “About the Ghuul thing.”

  “We don’t know that for sure,” Wood replied, breathlessly.

  “You heard the widow,” Tom said. “That sick sonofabitch was into all manner of weird shit. Hell, he probably learned everything he knew from a book just like the one you took delivery of today.”

  Wood, staring blankly at the road in front of him, blowing his nose—since when did he get that cold? —on a balled-up tissue he’d pulled from
some secret compartment on his chair, said, “We can find out for sure.”

  “Find out for sure?” Tom repeated the words monotonously, autonomically.

  Wood wheeled around to face Tom. “It’s too late to do anything more this afternoon, and the library’s shut tomorrow—Sunday, and all—but what if we could find out which books Frederick White took out? What he was in to?”

  “Is there a way to do that?”

  “Fucked if I know,” Wood said, “but if anyone can tell us, Margaret Banks can.”

  “And what if there’s some sort of privacy clause?”

  “A what-now?”

  “You know, like she can’t dispense that kind of information?” Tom didn’t know if there was—and if there was, whether it still counted after a person had been dead for thirty years—but it sounded like the kind of thing which could stand between them and the truth.

  “Then I’ll have to sweet-talk her,” Wood said, grinning slightly. “She’s got the hots for me. Did you know that?”

  EIGHTEEN

  October 30th, 2016,

  St. George’s Hospital

  Tooting, London

  Luke was thankful to be up and about. For three whole days he had been confined to a hospital bed, staring at the same four walls—and a tiny window through which he watched the doctors and they watched him right back—and although he was still hooked up to a drip, he could walk just fine, so long as he didn’t rush.

  As he left his tiny cubicle, and the incessant beeping machine which neither he nor the nurses apparently knew how to reset, he was accosted by one of the friendlier doctors making his rounds.

  “You shouldn’t be out of bed.” And yet there was a slight smile upon Doctor Khan’s face, as if it were a relief to witness a miracle at work.