The October Boys

by Adam Millard

  “Don’t give me that, doc,” Luke said, also smiling. “I’m bored shitless in there. Didn’t you guys think to install a TV? What am I paying my National Insurance for?”

  Doctor Khan shrugged. “The food?”

  “In that case,” Luke said. “You owe me a rebate.”

  They went back and forth like that for several minutes. Doctor Khan was interested in how Luke was feeling today, and Luke told him that, apart from the agonising pain in his right side—cracked ribs will do that to a person—he felt good. It was a lie; he was in a world of pain, but he couldn’t just lie here while the whole world crumbled around him. And besides, he had a visit to make.

  And hopefully he wasn’t too late.

  “So, where are you thinking of going?” Doctor Khan asked. “Just getting a little exercise and a break from the lovely, albeit small, room we’ve provided you with?”

  Small? That was an understatement. Luke had stayed in bigger sleeping-bags.

  “Cafeteria,” Luke said. “Just in case their food’s better than the stuff you keep bringing me.”

  Doctor Khan nodded. “I can vouch for the lasagne,” he said. “Just steer clear of the sausages.”

  Luke told him that he would, and for some reason that was one of the funniest things he had ever said out loud and they both laughed, at least until Luke was out of sight along the corridor leaving the doctor to finish his rounds.

  It was a slow process, walking, trying not to slip over on the shiny tiled floor, but Luke was on a mission to find Ward D4. Karen had told him just yesterday that that was where they were keeping his friend, the boxer, for observations, and that she would take him down there when he was feeling a little better.

  Well, I’m not feeling on top of the world, honey, he thought, but I’m moving. Slowly, slowly catchy monkey…

  Today was Monday, and Luke knew Monday was discharge day for Marcus. He couldn’t rely on the possibility that his friend would get the chance to visit him before disappearing again for thirty more years, and they needed to talk.

  It was important.

  Ward D4 was worse, even, than the gleaming, confined, chaotic shit-storm Hell Luke had been consigned to, starting with a receptionist whose entire personality was about as bare as the corridor walls through which he had just traipsed.

  “Can I help you?” Clearly she could, but the tone of her voice suggested she didn’t want to.

  Luke stood in front of the glass, and he’d never felt more like a criminal in his entire life. “Erm, yeah, I believe my friend is on this ward. We were in a car accident together, and I wanted to catch him before he went home.”

  The receptionist’s stoic expression said it all. “Visiting isn’t until three this afternoon.”

  “I noticed that on the sign,” Luke said, motioning to the framed printout attached to the glass. “But, like I said, I wanted to catch him before he was discharged. I’m a patient here…” Such a stupid thing to say! Of course he was a patient here. People didn’t just walk around the streets wearing drab olive gowns and pushing drip-stands. She already knew he was a patient here, and seemingly didn’t give two shits about it.

  After several seconds, she relented with a sigh. “What’s the name of the patient?”

  Is this a quiz? Are we doing a fucking quiz now?

  “It’s Marcus Berry,” Luke said, nervously laughing for some strange reason, which the receptionist clearly didn’t appreciate. “My car hit his car, which is weird because we haven’t seen each other in, like, thirty—”

  The door to the left of the window began to buzz. “Just push the door,” said the receptionist. “Bay 11.”

  Luke nodded his thanks before making his way through the door, dragging his drip-stand behind him. He wondered if she heard him mutter the word ‘bitch’ as he made his way along yet another corridor toward Bay 11. He hoped she did.

  There were several differences between his ward and D4. It was a lot quieter here, for one; Luke saw only one nurse before he reached Bay 11, and there was a good chance she wasn’t even a nurse at all, but a cleaner in disguise. Two, the patients down here were all waiting to go home, sitting fully dressed upon their made beds, waiting for discharge papers and prescriptions with their sad little bags packed next to them. Luke wished that were him right now.

  The lights flickered overhead, blinking noisily off and on, and yet there was nothing supernatural about it. This was clearly just a thing down here on D4, something someone would eventually get around to fixing.

  Maybe.

  Luke arrived at Bay 11 and knocked before entering.

  “Hey!” Marcus was one of the lucky few, the chosen ones, who were all packed and ready to leave. His bags sat on his bed and he stood waiting at the small window, even though the view offered only a glimpse of workmen and machinery installing yet another extension—or staff car-park—to the hospital. “I was going to come see you before I left. We need to talk.”

  So Marcus thought so, too.

  “The Ice Cream Man?” Luke said, not quite a question.

  Marcus nodded. “The Ice Cream Man.”

  “That’s why you’re down here, isn’t it?” Luke already knew the answer. He stepped into the bay and allowed the door to slowly close on its hydraulic hinge. “You’ve seen him, too.”

  Marcus stepped away from the window, shaking his head and sighing. “I’ve seen a lot of things recently, things which have made me question my own sanity.” He smiled, though it looked pained, more of a grimace. “I’m a boxer, you know? Maybe I’ve taken one too many punches to the temple, and now I’m a little confused in the brain.”

  “What does that make me?” Luke said. “I’ve been seeing this prick too, and I haven’t been in a good fight since 1991.”

  Marcus paused for a moment, and then said, “Jack Bridge, on the football pitch at lunchtime.”

  Luke couldn’t believe it. Even he had forgotten the name of the kid whose sole purpose in life was to bring him to his knees, humiliate him in front of the rest of the school. “Jack Bridge…” he said. “God, I haven’t thought of that spotty little fucker in years.”

  “I remember that fight well,” Marcus said, this time a genuine smile playing about his countenance. “You would have won if he hadn’t got you in an arm-bar.”

  Luke rubbed at his shoulder, as if he still suffered the effects of said manoeuvre. When he realised what he was doing, and that Marcus was staring at him expectantly, he stopped massaging his shoulder and returned to the matter at hand. “Marcus, that… thing… tried to make me kill my own daughter.”

  “Karen told me,” Marcus said. “After she left you yesterday, she and I had a little chat over the worst cup of piss tea I ever had the misfortune of being charged for.”

  “What else did she say?” Luke didn’t know whether any of this mattered. That his wife would tell one of his best friends from childhood of his sudden murderous tendencies toward their daughter seemed a little strange.

  “She told me she knew it wasn’t you. That something had made you do it, because no matter how many times your daughter pesters you or disappoints you, there is no way in hell you would ever do anything to hurt her.” He nodded. “That’s when I knew He’d come to you, too.”

  Luke turned and slowly lowered himself down onto Marcus’s hospital bed. Marcus moved around so that they were facing one another. “So, what are we expecting here?” Luke said. “I mean, if he’s coming back, why now? After almost thirty years?”

  Marcus shrugged. “Maybe it never left?” Referring to the Ice Cream Man as an IT seemed to make more sense than pronoun they had been using so far. That thing was not a man. “Maybe it’s always been here, biding its time.”

  “Playing the long game?” Luke said. That was even more terrifying to him than believing the fucker had just shown up out of nowhere after so many years. To think it might have been hiding, waiting in the shadows, a vengeful wraith with nothing but time on its hands and a phantom truck in the garage. �
�And now it’s coming back to Havering to play all over again.”

  “Seems so to me,” Marcus said. “Only we’re adults now. We can take this thing out.”

  Luke didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “I hate to break it to you, mate, but I’ve left my proton pack at home.” It wasn’t even funny, and neither of them laughed to prove it. “How would we even know where to start with this sonofabitch? What, do we just lurk around on Halloween, waiting for the sound of ice cream chimes—

  Pop goes the weasel

  —and then chase after him in our newly-mangled cars screaming in Latin at the top of our voices?”

  That shouldn’t have been funny, and yet it was. Marcus couldn’t help himself. “You were always the cynical one, even when we were kids. Always telling us why something was a bad idea. We can’t swim in that, there might be piranhas in there. Remember that one?”

  Luke did remember that, remembered standing in front of the lake in nothing but his swim trunks while Marcus and Tom and Ryan goaded him in to going first. He never did get in that water, and from what he could recall, he managed to convince Tom it was a bad idea, too. “This is a little bit different to when we were kids,” Luke said, for they could stand—or in his case sit—here all day remembering fun and not-so-fun times from their childhood, but it wasn’t getting them anywhere. “If this thing is real, and we both agree it is, and that for some reason it’s coming back, we need to figure out a way to stop it.”

  Marcus patted Luke’s shoulder, and when Luke winced with pain he apologised before speaking. “That’s the spirit, son,” he said, more like a coach giving a pep talk to a bunch of amateur footballers than a guy about to go to war with an entity from another realm. “Now, this thing has made itself known to you, and it fucked up my last fight right in the middle of the ring, then we can be pretty sure Tom’s had dealings with it, too.”

  Makes sense, Luke thought. Tom was their leader as kids; if anyone was going to get the brunt of the Ice Cream Man’s wrath, it was him. “You think he’s already on his way?”

  “If Tom’s anything like he was when we were kids, I’ll bet he was the first one of us here.” Marcus scratched his head. “We just need to find him, see what he knows—”

  “Once again,” Luke said, motioning to his incapacitated body, “I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but I’m in no fit shape to take on a supernatural force. And besides, they’re not going to let me leave the hospital, not like this. Fuck knows how long I’m going to be here.”

  And therein lay their first problem. If they were going to beat this thing, Marcus would have to try to find Tom alone, and while they were separated, they were vulnerable, precisely what the Ice Cream Man wanted.

  “If—when—I find Tom,” Marcus said, “we’ll come back here and take it from there.”

  “And what if He—IT—gets to us first?” Luke asked, knowing that the Ice Cream Man was growing in power, trying to attack them even now.

  “Then we hit that fucker with everything we have,” Marcus said. “And don’t stop hitting until we knock it back to Hell.”

  NINETEEN

  October 30th, 2016

  Redbridge, London

  The library was quieter than the last time Tom had visited, just a few short days ago. A couple of students were browsing the non-fiction aisles, no doubt searching for psychology textbooks or huge volumes on astrobiology. A solitary old man sat at a computer in the media room; Tom wondered whether the old man was hiding something by facing the door, his computer screen not visible to librarians or browsers. Perhaps this was the only quiet time he had to search for porn, or maybe it was something more sinister even than that.

  Once again, Wood had decided to use his wheelchair instead of the mobility scooter he had been zooming around on when Tom first met him in The Walnut Tree. It seemed to take more energy out of the ageing ex-copper, though he never complained, never once groaned or grumbled when his wheels snagged on something or dipped into a pothole or crack in the pavement.

  “I don’t see Margaret,” Tom said, scanning the library stacks for signs of the librarian. “Don’t tell me this is her day off.”

  “That woman doesn’t take days off,” Wood said. “She’s a worker bee. Her first day off will be the same day she dies.”

  Or the one after, depending on whether she died the night before, Tom thought, but correcting Wood on such a trivial matter was ridiculous and so he kept it to himself.

  Sure enough, they found Margaret Banks—the worker bee—pricing up donated books, which were not quite good enough to make the shelves of Redbridge Central Library, in an adjacent room to the Crime Fiction aisle. She was tsking and talking to herself as she went about her business, which seemed to primarily involve judging a book by its tattered cover before either slapping a 50p sticker on it or tossing it into the open black bag to her right.

  As Tom and Wood approached the open door, she glanced up and then smiled. “Well, if it isn’t Trevor Wood and his new favourite sidekick.” She climbed to her feet, giving up on the task she was performing and discarding the remaining books in the refuse sack. “It seems not a day goes by when I don’t see one of you or the other, but this is the first time I’ve seen you together.” She arched her eyebrows, as if there might be something going which only she knew about.

  “We’d stop coming if you didn’t work here,” Wood said. Tom had expected the charm offensive to come into play at some point, though not quite so soon.

  “I’ll bet you say that to all the librarians,” Margaret said, reddening slightly.

  I feel like the third wheel in some sick courting ritual, Tom thought, though he knew that only one of the superannuated people present were being genuine. “Margaret, the reason why we’re back—yet again—is that we were wondering if there might, you know, be any way of looking into the books checked out by a deceased lender.”

  “A deceased lender!” Margaret said, mocking shock. “They’ll give library cards to anyone these days.” This might have been hilarious to her (and apparently it was) but to Tom it was simply wasting time, and not really answering his question. Wood, on the other hand, was laughing along with the librarian, making the most of his debonair ruse and hoping it was worth it in the end.

  “I mean, books he took out just before he died?” Tom said, deflecting back to the question.

  “I know, dear,” Margaret said. “I’m just entertaining myself a little bit.” She came out of the stockroom and walked purposefully through the aisles. Tom and Wood followed; for a moment, Tom wondered whether she had ignored the question and was off to perform some other menial task, but then as she walked, she began to talk. “You’re asking if there is any way I have access to some sort of system that stores the names of all the books a particular lender has taken out over the years?”

  “Exactly,” Tom said, trying to keep up as they moved first through Information Technology and then Social Studies.

  “There’s a little thing called privacy,” Margaret said. “We would never be able to store that kind of information on our system.”

  Wood sighed. Fuck it!

  They arrived at the library’s main counter, a huge island at the centre of the room, and Margaret slipped behind it and settled herself down at the ancient whirring computer that sat there. “However… we do keep a record of outstanding fines, though it’s pretty clear a lot of these people are never coming back to pay up—”

  “Will that let you know the title of the book for which the fine is owed?” Wood, Tom realised, had no idea how this worked, the same as he didn’t. But if Frederick White had died before returning his books… maybe…

  “What’s the name of the lender?” Margaret’s fingers hovered over the keyboard as she stared at the screen over her tops of her spectacles, which sat so far down her nose they were practically useless.

  Wood cleared his throat. “Frederick White,” he said.

  The librarian typed slowly and deliberately, humming a tune Tom t
hought he recognised as she did so. We’ll Meet Again by Vera Lynn, perhaps?

  “I’ve got two Fred Whites,” she said. “One from 132 Balfour Road, and another from 7, Burke Street—”

  “It’s that one!” Tom said, his heart racing inside his chest. He looked expectantly toward Wood, and Wood shook his head: Don’t get your hopes up, kid. Probably a book on botany…

  “Okay,” Margaret said as an exhale. She pressed a few more keys and hit enter, and only then did she push her spectacles up so they would be of some use. Reading from the screen, she said, “Ah, this guy owes an outstanding fine of… hmm… almost eighty pounds. That can’t be right—”

  It is right! Tom thought. You take books out of the library in 1987 and don’t return them, those fines are soon going to stack up.

  “What were the names of the books, Margaret?” Wood asked, calmly.

  A press of a button later, Margaret said, “Well, well, well. It seems Frederick White was into the same weird nonsense you’re in to, Trevor.” There was a hint of scorn in her voice. “That fine is the total for three books, the first of which is, I think, a history book. Neo-Babylonian Empire by J.C. Penworthy. The second book is called Annunaki: Hidden Codes by Colt Merry, and the third book is… well, you already know what the third book is…” She smiled at Wood; Wood did not smile back.

  “How would we know what the third book is?” Wood asked.

  “Because,” Margaret said, after a quick click of her tongue and a roll of her eyes, “it was the book you ordered in, the one your friend here delivered to you.”

  “Ghuul: The Children-Eater…” Tom said, not a question.

  “The one without an author byline,” Margaret confirmed. “That book must be a bit older than I thought. I thought I recognised the name when you said it: Frederick White.” To Wood, she said, “When you asked me to see if we had that book in, remember I checked on the system?”

  “That’s right, you did,” Wood said.

  “And it came up on the system as overdue from a mister Frederick White, which was why I said I’d order a new copy. And it came in for you, but the copy Frederick White took out of here in 1987 is still out there somewhere.”