by Adam Millard
“So I should just go?” Luke shook his head, incredulous.
“Back to the hospital,” Karen said. “Please, Luke, your daughter needs you. I need you, but we need you well, and not scared of things which are never going to happen.”
Luke pushed himself up from the sofa, his busted ribs aching like never before. Inside he was screaming, but outside… outside he wished he could.
At least Karen had the decency to walk him to the door, to stand there nodding as he reversed out of the driveway: That’s it. Off you go, back to the hospital.
But the hospital was the last place he would be going, for today was Halloween and time was running out.
He had to find Marcus.
We don’t stop hitting until we knock that sonofabitch back to Hell.
TWENTY-FOUR
October 31st, 2016
Redbridge, London
Wood was first up and making breakfast before the sun had even risen above the houses across the street. Tom found him in the kitchen, muttering something or other about sausages and bacon, and the lack thereof.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Tom said, motioning to the refrigerator. “Danielle does the shopping, and she’s adamant that stuff puts you into an early grave.”
“Some of us are banking on it,” Wood grumbled. He was definitely not a morning person. “You might want to let Danielle in on a little secret, one I learned many years ago, when I still had working fucking legs and a will to live: Even pigs like bacon.”
Tom set about making the coffee. “Only because they don’t know where it comes from,” he said.
“I doubt that would make a bit of difference,” Wood said. “They eat their own shit, don’t they? Pretty sure they know where that comes from.”
There was a palpable tension in the air, an odd sense of apprehension as they went about compiling a half-decent breakfast. Tom knew better than to interfere, so other than handing Wood a box of eggs and a bag of bread, there wasn’t much else he could do. He settled himself down at the table and stared anxiously out through the kitchen window.
“Something smells mmm-mmm, finger-licking good in here,” Marcus said when he entered the kitchen five minutes later. “Is that an omelette? Mushroom and pepper? Oh, and toast and butter and all things goooood. Damn, Sarge, it’s like you read my mind.”
For some bizarre reason, Marcus had started calling Wood ‘Sarge’, even though the old man had been out of the force for more than two decades, and they had never—not once, nope, hu-huh—called him Sarge back when they were twelve. If they had, Wood would have stuffed them in the back of his Panda on general principle until they learned some manner.
“Just sit down, Banger, and try not to break the chair. Danielle does the shopping in this house, apparently, and I’m guessing it wouldn’t take much to turn those Ikea stools to kindling,” Wood said, wheeling himself back and forth between the kitchen counter and the table, each time carrying something new: toast, jam, plates, cutlery.
Marcus did as he was told. “So, what’s the plan, boys?” he said. “We didn’t really talk about it last night—my head still hurts—but do you think we’re going to need to bust Luke out of the hospital? You know, like the A-Team used to do with Mad Murdoch at the start of every episode?”
Tom had been miles away, focussed upon a flock of pigeons alighting on the rooftops across the street. But when Marcus gave him a little nudge, he surprised even himself. “I don’t know,” he said. “Are we going to be putting Luke in danger by getting him out of that place? I mean, is he going to be able to run if he has to?”
“I can’t run,” Wood said, returning to the kitchen table with a steaming plate of eggs. “Does that make me a liability?” He was being facetious, and Tom knew better than to engage.
“I just think we’d be weakening ourselves as a group,” Tom explained. “I’m not being an asshole; I just want to make it through the night in one piece. I love Luke as much as you—that guy went through it back in the day, and I made sure I was always there to pick him up—but do we really need someone slowing us down? You said it yourself, he was pretty bashed up.”
Marcus, buttering a piece of toast, said, “I know, if I were him, I’d want you guys to come get me. That’s all I’m saying.” He crunched into the toast; crumbs fell to his plate. He began to push his thumb into the crumbs, and once he was satisfied, suck them from his thumb. It was something they would have done as children, but none of them had truly grown up, not really. It was easier to act that way now they were reunited. Who was going to tell them otherwise?
Maybe you’re right, Tom thought. He hadn’t looked at it from the other side, from Luke’s point of view. The poor guy had come down here, just as they all had, to put an end to this maniac, and now he was lying helpless in some shitty hospital bed, waiting for it to all be over. That wasn’t right.
It wasn’t fair.
Tom was about to say as much when there came a knock at the door. All three of them turned in the direction of the noise, but none of them said a word. The caller—a man, gruff as if he’d smoked too many cigarettes and drunk too much bad vodka—was the first to speak, calling through the letterbox.
“Hello? I’m looking for Tom Craven? Answers to the names Tom, Tommy, Pin-dick, Warts, Piledriver, Anusol…” The list went on and on, but Tom was no longer listening. He stood from the kitchen table and rushed across the room, through the door and into the hallway, and unlocked the front door.
Looking tired and dishevelled, Luke Davis was a sight for sore eyes. His days’ old stubble suggested he hadn’t seen a razor for a while, and the bags beneath his eyes made him look more like fifty than his actual age, a decade younger.
Tom pulled Luke in for an embrace, ignoring his friend’s pained hiss at first, and then, remembering that Luke should have been in hospital, he eased up “Good to see you, man.”
“You have no idea,” Luke said. Tom thought he detected fear in Luke’s voice; fear and sadness. “Looks like I’m just in time for breakfast.”
* * *
Tom, Marcus, and Wood listened as Luke explained what he had been through and the things he had seen. Of course, Marcus already knew some of Luke’s story, but he sat silently and took it all in as if it were the first time.
Tom thought he had had it rough; losing Danielle (temporarily?), seeing Kurian change into Ghuul before his eyes, watching helplessly as Margaret Banks committed suicide in the most ridiculous of ways. But his experiences this past week were nothing compared to Luke’s.
They ate eggs, drank coffee, and smoked cigarettes—all except for Marcus, who had never taken up that particular habit, and yet he didn’t complain as the kitchen filled with a thick white fog—and for the first time in almost thirty years the gang were back together
(all except for Ryan)
and it felt good. It felt right, as if they had simply gone to bed back in ’88 and woke up here, eating breakfast in Tom’s smoky kitchen. Everything in-between was just filler.
Trust Wood to bring them all back down to earth. “Boys, I know this is a fun day for you all. You haven’t seen each other since you pulled each other’s puds in the woods, I get it, but we need to focus. That thing is coming back tonight—”
“Or today,” Marcus said. “Who knows what it’s capable of.”
Tom shook his head. “No, it only comes at night,” he said. He didn’t know how he knew that; he just did.
Wood seemed to agree, for he was nodding. “Tom’s right. Ghuul is a demon of the night. Whatever it’s going to do, it will do it after dark.”
“Wait a minute,” Luke said, pouring himself a third cup of coffee. He looked like he needed it. “Ghuul? I’ve heard that name in my nightmares. What does it mean?”
There wasn’t time for Luke to read the book, so Tom motioned for Wood to give Luke the concise version.
“That’s its name,” Wood said. “It’s a demon, a devourer of children—their souls at least. Every seven years it returns to o
ur realm for nourishment.”
“By nourishment,” Luke said, “you mean a kid?”
Wood nodded. “It abducts a child, transports it back to its own netherworld, feeds upon its soul.” As Wood explained, Luke grimaced. Was he picturing Ryan in that situation? Tom was, and it was almost too much to bear.
“But why an Ice Cream Man?” Luke asked.
Tom lit a cigarette and walked across the room, where he opened a window. It was getting a little too smoky in there, even for him. “Also a long story,” Tom told Luke. “But the guy who summoned Ghuul was an Ice Cream Man.”
“Kinda convenient,” Luke said. “I mean, you’re an ancient eater of children, just passing the time away in your own little nether-netherworld, and then boom! You’re summoned by a guy doing the only job in the world where it’s perfectly fine to chat up kids. I’ll bet its fucking eyes lit up when it realised how lucky it was.”
“Just the way it goes,” Wood said, waving a hand dismissively through the air. “It could have been a welder, a window-cleaner, a cop… it wouldn’t make a difference. All Ghuul needs is a willing host, and there were none more willing than Frederick White. Just so happened he had a little evil in him already.”
“And now he has a lot,” Marcus said. “And we’re up Shit Creek without a paddle until we know where and when it’s going to appear.”
Luke cleared his throat. “I think it’s going after my daughter,” he said. “The last two dreams I’ve had were about her, and it seemed to thrive on the fact I almost killed her myself. I tried to convince my wife, Karen, I was telling the truth, but I guess phantom ice cream men stories aren’t as scary as they used to be.”
“How sure are you?” Wood grunted.
“Pretty sure,” Luke replied. “It knows how much she means to me, that I would give my own life for hers if I could. And since I’m the only one of us who has a kid…” He trailed off, perhaps unsure if he had offended any of his friends.
Marcus turned to face Tom. “He’s right.”
“Then what? We park up outside Luke’s house and hope for the best?” Tom didn’t like the sound of that; talk about putting all your eggs in one basket. The Ice Cream Man was not limited by geography. Harvey Poulson had been snatched outside a supermarket in Brighton, Rochelle Chambers from her bedroom in Glasgow. The odds on it showing up at an exact place at an exact time were miniscule.
“We can’t speculate on where and when it’s going to appear,” Wood said. He wheeled himself away from the table. “It’s too much of a gamble. When tonight comes, all we can do is wait. We’ll hear it before we see it, and then we go after it.”
“Hate to break it to you,” Tom said, “but we don’t have a car between us.”
“I’ve got a TR7,” Luke said, “but even if we could all fit in it, which we can’t, it’s not mine. I’m supposed to be dropping it back this morning. In fact, I’m already late.” He glanced toward the clock: 08:25AM.
Look at us, Tom thought. Going into battle against an ancient force and not one of us a set of wheels to keep up with a phantom ice cream truck. “We could rent something,” Tom suggested. “Something quick and big enough for the four of us.”
“Three,” Luke said, and when all eyes fell upon him, he explained. “I can’t leave it to chance. If that thing goes after Lydia, I’m going to be there to protect her. I need her to know her father loves her very much, would never do anything to hurt her, and I couldn’t live with myself if… if that fucker got her because I was an hour away on some wild goose chase.”
“We need you,” Marcus said. They were all thinking it, but Marcus was the one who voiced it. “Luke, we’ll be stronger with you. I don’t know, but I think that thing was trying to prevent this, to stop us all from gathering here. That’s why it’s been making life hell for us all. It’s been trying to drive a wedge between us. It knows what frightens us and it’s been using our fears against us, but now we’re all here… I don’t know, man. I’m just not scared anymore. I’m pissed. I’m ready to kick this thing’s fucking head off, but I’m not scared.”
“I hear you,” Luke said, “but Lydia—”
“What if we could somehow convince her to come here?” It was a hypothetical ‘what if’, but Tom knew they could come up with something between them.
“There’s no way,” Luke said. “There’s nothing here for her, or for Karen…” He paused, extinguished his umpteenth cigarette, and began to slowly nod. “There might be something, but it’s a long-shot, and I doubt Karen will go for it.”
“Willing to give it a go?” Tom said.
Luke nodded. “If it keeps her safe tonight, I’m willing to do whatever it takes.”
* * *
Tom shivered as Luke steered the TR7 onto the driveway of his mother’s house. Being back in Havering was like returning to the scene of some brutal murder-suicide; it was just a location, a place on a map, but the things that had happened there made it haunting. Tom would have felt more at ease driving into Chernobyl with the windows down.
Luke slowed the car and pulled the handbrake. When it came off in his hand, and he glanced down at it as if it were a banana, Tom erupted with laughter.
“Tell me, how big is this Dave geezer again?” Tom couldn’t help himself. And besides, it was a much-needed respite from the misery that had filled the car on the drive over.
Luke dropped the broken handbrake into the foot-well and pushed the car into first gear to prevent it from rolling back down the drive and out onto the main road. “It was already knackered,” Luke said. “I forgot. I’ll tell him I’ll pay for it.”
“I wouldn’t,” Tom said. “The guy’s boinking your mom. I’d say a broken handbrake makes you about even.”
They climbed out of the TR7 and approached the house. Their respective breaths crystalized in front of their faces; it was a cold, dismal morning, but at least it wasn’t raining.
It wasn’t the bald giant who answered the door—much to Luke’s apparent relief—but Luke’s mother, Anne. Tom hadn’t seen her for decades, but he could see that the years hadn’t been kind to her. She looked ill, as if she might be afflicted with something terminal. Her hair was huge on her head; an eighties perm which had somehow got away from her. Tom wouldn’t have recognised her if he’d past her in the street. And she didn’t seem to recognise Tom, either, which was fine by him.
After handing his mother the keys to Dave’s beloved TR7—now with 100 per cent more snapped handbrake—Luke explained what he wanted of his mother, and she seemed to brighten at the thought.
“Here?” she said. “Tonight?”
“I’m thinking it would be good for you to see her again, you know? She’s eight years old and you were right. What happened between us is in the past. There’s no reason Lydia should miss out because a bunch of grown-ups can’t act civilly.”
And it was as easy as that. Luke’s mother, looking younger and happier than when she’d answered the door a few moments ago, invited both he and Tom in for coffee, but Luke told her they didn’t have time. “Lots of planning to do,” he told her. “Maybe put on a bit of a spread, Mom? Lydia really likes Halloween. It’ll be nice for her to spend it with her grandma.”
They called a cab from the house and waited out front for it to arrive, during which time Luke put a call through to Karen. Tom didn’t envy his friend. He would call his own wife before tonight, but right now he was in the zone. He couldn’t allow anything to knock him off-kilter.
It sounded to Tom as if Karen was giving Luke a hard time on the phone; Luke explained—or at least attempted to—why he had not returned to the hospital. Feeling much better, was one of the reasons he gave. Waste of time was another. All the time he spoke he held onto his ribs as if he was afraid they might fall out. Tom could see his friend was not ‘feeling much better’ at all; he was simply making do, the same way they all were.
“Tonight, Karen. My mother really wants to see her. Will you do that? For me?” Tom heard her screeching madly
on the other end of the line, and then Luke cut her off with, “Dad’s not even going to be there. Remember, they’re divorcing. It’ll just be you, Lydia, and my mother.”
Not enough to swing it, Tom thought, and then contemplated knocking the door once again and telling Luke’s mother, Sorry, change of plan. Can’t see your granddaughter tonight. Whoopsie.
“I know, Karen. Don’t you think I… please, just do this one thing for me. I promise I’ll go back to the hospital. Whatever it takes.” A few seconds later, Luke gave Tom the thumbs up. “Okay, yeah, around six. She’ll be really happy to hear that.” Another thumbs-up. “And when you’re here, don’t open the door to anyone, not even Trick or Treaters… nothing’s going on, Karen, I just want you to be safe… okay, tell Lydia… well tell her Daddy loves her so much.”
The cab arrived just as Luke finished saying his goodbyes. They were halfway back to Redbridge when Luke said, “I hope we’re doing the right thing.”
That, Tom thought, was such a strange thing to say. The right thing? As opposed to what? Doing nothing? “I guess we’ll find out tonight,” Tom said.
Neither of them spoke for the remainder of the journey.
* * *
When they arrived back at Tom’s, Wood and Marcus were outside giving their car for the evening—a Range Rover Sport—a once over.
“Couldn’t you have got anything bigger?” Tom said, sardonically. The vehicle was huge, a mechanical elephant, and though it wasn’t what Tom had had in mind, Wood assured him it would do the job.
“Nought to sixty in seven seconds,” Wood said. “She’ll reach one-thirty, easy.”
Tom looked at Marcus, who held his hands out. “I told him it was overkill,” he said. “I said, ‘we’re gonna be chasing an ice cream truck, not Lewis Hamilton. You can’t argue with him.”
Apart from its obvious excessiveness, Tom found the vehicle to be perfect. It must have cost Wood a week’s pension to hire, maybe even more. It was just another sign that Wood was incredibly serious about ending this tonight. No expense spared.
