The Six

by Luca Veste

  Another view of the house came to mind. One that looked more inviting, coming to life in the summer sun and the sound of an excited child’s laughter.

  I stopped the car, parking twenty foot from the front of the farmhouse.

  The front door didn’t open at my arrival. There was no twitch of curtains, not that I’d have been able to see them anyway. The sky overhead drizzled down on my head, as I got out of the car and heard my feet crunch on the gravel lying on the ground. To the side of the farmhouse, a crumbling structure of wood peeled and cracked, and a memory flashed in my head.

  I was a child. Or a little older. I wasn’t sure. I was standing in the same place. The house was different in the blink of an eye. Filled with people I knew. Recognised.

  Liked.

  Loved.

  It was a home.

  I walked into the lean-to at the side of the house and ducked through a small opening. Inside, tiny pinpricks of light came through holes in the roof, not enough to make it completely light. Still, it didn’t matter.

  There were candles dotted around the entire room. Red candles. In storm lanterns. On every available surface.

  And that memory came again. As if I’d stood there before. Seen the same things before. Only this time, it was more distorted. More blurry. My mind was filling in blanks that didn’t exist before.

  I wasn’t breathing. The silence wasn’t silent.

  There were sounds. All around me.

  I couldn’t move.

  I couldn’t speak.

  I could only stand there, waiting.

  And when the blow from behind me came, I welcomed the darkness that followed it.

  1993

  We were sitting watching Wrestlemania. Chris had managed to get a VHS copy of it somehow – probably managed to convince his mum that he desperately needed it – so we had made a plan to have a sleepover at his house. It was July, last day of school and straight round to his.

  It was ace.

  ‘If Bret Hart puts Yokozuna in a sharpshooter, it wouldn’t hurt him at all. His legs are too fat.’

  ‘The sharpshooter can hurt you whatever size you are,’ I said, grabbing a BlackJack sweet from the pile we had in front of us. Mick the Moby had been round earlier that evening and we’d stocked up. ‘Anyway, he’s gonna get Banzai dropped before that anyway.’

  ‘You don’t think Bret will win? It’s Wrestlemania . . . the good guy always has to win.’

  ‘Not always.’

  We watched it, giggling at the girls in bikinis who came to the ring with Lex Luger. Laughed until it hurt when Bobby Heenan came in riding a camel backwards. Shouted along with the crowd when the Mega-Maniacs threw money into the air.

  ‘We’re going to this farmhouse in the summer holidays and my mum said you could come too. Do you want to?’

  ‘Yeah, should be okay. Where is it?’

  ‘Somewhere called the Peak District. Never heard of it.’

  ‘Neither have I.’

  ‘It’s my nan’s place. Been in the family for years, but no one stays there anymore. I think they’re gonna try and sell it.’

  That’s how things were organised between us. Easy and stress-free. We spent every day together it seemed. Usually at his house. Now I would be going on holiday with him. I just hoped it would be soon. I didn’t fancy spending a week on my own during the summer holidays.

  ‘Do you think that good doesn’t always win?’ Chris said, as the commentators built up to the main event on the screen. ‘You know . . . can bad win as well?’

  ‘I guess,’ I replied, then glugged down another glass of coke. ‘It would set it up for Summerslam . . . ’

  ‘I’m not talking about the wrestling.’

  Something in Chris’s voice made me tear my attention away from the screen and look at him. He was staring out his bedroom window, as the daylight outside began to give way to the summer evening.

  ‘What do you mean then?’

  The room became smaller and quieter, as Chris shifted uncomfortably on the floor and away from me.

  ‘Sometimes, I think there’s only bad and there can’t really be any good without it, you know?’

  I didn’t but I nodded along anyway. Chris sometimes went quiet for long periods and I wondered what he was thinking half the time. I knew he didn’t like our status in school – that he would say things sometimes about what he wanted to do to those who picked on him.

  ‘I just wish there was a way of getting the bad thoughts out,’ Chris said, reaching over and picking up the last sweet in the pile and breaking a refresher bar in half. He handed me the other piece. ‘If we did that, then it would be good all the time, don’t you think?’

  I wasn’t sure what to think and the match was about to start on the television. Macho Man Randy Savage in gold and white. Yokozuna following Mr Fuji holding a Japanese flag. Bret Hart in his pink shades and pink and black costume. ‘Yeah, you’re right,’ I said, leaning forward and readying myself for what was about to happen. Excited and nervous. ‘If we only had to do something a little bad to make things all good, then maybe everything would be great.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  I turned my attention back to the screen, but something next to the television made me frown.

  ‘What’s with the candle? Can I blow it out? I hate those things.’

  ‘No,’ Chris shouted, startling me into silence. He was on his feet, standing next to the burning red candle, a hand out as if he were protecting it. ‘You can’t mess with this. I need it.’

  I shrugged, thinking he was just being a weirdo as he sometimes was. He started murmuring something under his breath, but I was already engrossed in the wrestling. As he was, eventually. Sitting next to me and shouting and hollering alongside me. After it ended, we argued for hours about whether it was right that Hulk Hogan came in at the end of the show and won the title in like twenty seconds or something, after Bret Hart had been cheated. I forgot about the conversation that happened before it.

  The words he’d said, as I stopped listening and tried to watch the main event.

  ‘Here comes a candle . . . to chop off your head.’

  Forty-Two

  Flashes of darkness. Consciousness fading in and out. The sound of grunts and moans. My body being moved without my say. The smell of rain and mud in my nostrils. Trying to gain control of my senses but failing every time.

  I could hear my own voice, but I didn’t think it was under my control.

  The sky darkened each time I managed to open my eyes. I tried to move, but my limbs wouldn’t respond. My eyes felt covered in a film of fog.

  My head was stuck in a vice. Squeezing it until all I could hear was the sound of my own pain. It had taken form and was now all there was. Pounding and throbbing.

  It began to subside, as I felt the ground underneath me begin to solidify. The world was spinning and I couldn’t move.

  I can’t move.

  I tried to speak, but all I heard was a gasp of agony. My head felt as if it was being split in half. I could taste copper in my mouth. Pennies. Blood. Wetness on my face. Sharp, stinging pain in my left temple.

  All my senses returned in stages. I opened my eyes carefully, blinking rapidly in the darkness.

  Someone was singing close to me. A rhyme that reminded me of being a child. Of primary school and tuneless songs.

  ‘Oranges and lemons . . . ’

  There were pinpricks of light surrounding me. I could feel dampness and cool air rushing over me. I tried to speak again, but my throat simply croaked and snapped shut.

  ‘Say the bells of St Clements . . . ’

  I moved my head and an explosion of pain came with it. It blurred and I was above myself in a splitsecond – hovering outside of my body and looking down.

  ‘You owe me five farthings.. .’

  It came to me piece by piece. A spark of recollection.

  Of the smell of expensive aftershave. Drifting towards me, from behind. Of someone standing over me as
I struggled to stay conscious. A face so familiar suddenly becoming alien. Strange.

  My friend becoming a stranger.

  Then there’s nothingness. A clean slate, where memory should have been.

  ‘Say the bells of St Martin’s . . . ’

  I opened my eyes and stared into the face of death. The smell became overpowering. Decay and putrification. Desolation and destruction.

  She was lying on the ground a few yards away. Her face turned to mine. Eyes open and staring lifelessly. In the flickering light, I could see dirt and blood dried on her face and neck.

  I didn’t want to believe it was her. I had failed her. Failed us all.

  I should have known. I should have protected us.

  Michelle began to move slowly. Being dragged away. A grunt of effort around the words in the song. I tried to follow where she went, but couldn’t manage it.

  Michelle was dead.

  Stuart was dead.

  And Chris was a stranger now.

  That was when I saw them again. Red candles in storm lanterns. Two candles. Three. Four.

  I continued to count them until I ran out of vision.

  The slide and scrape of a body being dragged. A tune being hummed still. I didn’t remember the words past the opening lines.

  A distinctive thump, as Michelle was dropped somewhere. Then the sound of a shovel being driven into dirt and poured over her.

  I could almost see it.

  ‘Stop, please,’ I heard myself whisper. The tune stopped and the sound of footsteps came closer to me.

  I felt his presence over me and turned my head slowly to look up.

  ‘You shouldn’t have come here,’ Chris said, a look of anger and disappointment on his face. ‘You should have stayed away.’

  He was close enough to me that I could smell the sweat and expensive aftershave mix of him.

  ‘Why did you come here?’ Chris continued, a mark across his face, a shovel in his hand. He laid it down on the ground and crouched over me. ‘I didn’t want you to see this.’

  ‘What . . . what’s going on?’

  ‘If you had all just let me deal with this, nothing would have happened,’ Chris said, his voice exactly how I’d always heard it. No darkness, no evil in it. Normal. ‘I just had to take care of the ones who were going to say something. Not you. Not Nicola. Not Alexandra.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m your friend,’ Chris said and I felt his hand on my shoulder. ‘I wish you hadn’t come here. It would have been okay. I was fixing it all.’

  ‘Nicola . . . ?’

  He looked away quickly and I could hear something approaching emotion in his voice when he spoke again.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about that.’

  ‘What have you done?’ I tried, strength returning to me in stages. I still couldn’t move, but I knew why now. I could feel the ties binding my wrists and legs. They kept my body in place. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘I said I don’t want to talk about it,’ his voice close to my face, my ears ringing with the force of his scream.

  I tried to breathe in and out. Calmly. There was no calm. Not there. My insides felt as if they were being churned around and my heart was crashing against my chest.

  There was no way out from this.

  ‘You killed her,’ I said, louder now, as my voice came back little by little. Word by word. ‘You loved her and you killed her.’

  ‘Stop . . . ’

  ‘How could you? Who are you?’

  ‘I said stop.’

  When the blow came, it was almost in slow motion. A crunch of something unseen against my body, exploding into a billion stars of pain. I cried out, but I couldn’t hear it. My vision went dark again. It returned quicker this time and Chris was still next to me.

  ‘I didn’t want to do this,’ he said, softly again like the Chris I knew so well. ‘This isn’t what was supposed to happen. I thought we could deal with all of this.’

  ‘Why? I don’t understand . . . ’

  ‘You’ve never understood, Matt,’ Chris said, talking over me as I continued to try and work out a way out of this. ‘You thought everything was okay when we were being treated like crap at every turn. When we were being forced to be people we weren’t. All those people out there, who think they can treat us like we’re nothing. I couldn’t take it anymore. I was going to explode. You were always able to shrug it off, but I never could. So, I found a way out of it. I found a way to feel better.’

  ‘Tell me then,’ I spat out, turning my head to face him. His eyes were bloodshot and dark. The red candles flickered around us and I could smell wax and blood. ‘Talk to me. Don’t I deserve that at least? What happened in those woods? What happened to Mark Welsh?’

  He sighed and stood up. I watched him walk away and then come back, something in his hands. Outside, I heard rain fall onto a corrugated iron covering above our heads and the wooden structure creaked and moaned in response.

  ‘I’m not who you think I am.’

  I stopped myself from saying anything, but I wanted to scream in response. Twenty-five years of friendship and I didn’t know him.

  Of course, I did on some level. Had missed the signs, but read them all the same.

  ‘I always thought the Candle Man was a ridiculous name.’

  And there it was. Finally, I could see what had happened. No Stuart killing Mark Welsh and being discovered. Then covering it up by faking his own death. Tattooing another body, as if that was ever the likeliest option. No son of a serial killer we had murdered in the woods.

  No Candle Man.

  Only my friend. Only Chris.

  ‘Why?’ I said, and it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough. ‘Why would you do this?’

  ‘I need a release every now and again. That’s all. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve learned to keep myself under control, but sometimes . . . sometimes I need more. Every now and again, that’s all. It’s no big deal. Always people that deserved it. I get what I need and they get what they deserve.’

  I tried to follow his twisted logic, but failed. Tried to accept what he was telling me and failed again.

  ‘Do you remember that night, a year ago?’

  I croaked a response, which he took as an agreement.

  ‘The way Michelle spoke to me. To all of us. And Stuart, standing there and taking it. For you, it was nothing. An argument, quickly forgotten. That’s because that’s who you are – you’re a pushover. You accept the unacceptable. You respect the disrespectful. I don’t. I can’t. After something like that, I need to do it. I can’t live with the anger inside me. It has to come out, otherwise I can’t go on.’

  ‘Mark Welsh . . . ’

  ‘I saw him earlier that day. He barged into me and Nicola and didn’t apologise. Spilt our drinks everywhere. I followed him around after that. Watching every step he took. After Stuart and Michelle argued and divided us, I found him. I knew where he was camping. I took him into the woods. It would have ended there and no one would have been any the wiser, only I was interrupted.’

  ‘William Moore,’ I said, picturing the farmer walking through the woods with his fishing gear. That was the weapon he had. A knife or machete, used to cut up fish maybe – fighting for his life against us. ‘He saw what you were doing.’

  ‘It was an unfortunate thing. Stuart had heard me leave though – that was even less fortunate. He came looking for me and it all became chaotic. I managed to get away from the farmer, but he came across Stuart and thought it was me. I didn’t have time to do anything. Thankfully, you all came too and it made things a little more manageable.’

  ‘His body?’

  ‘That was me. I moved it before you came back so it wouldn’t be discovered. I couldn’t have that. When you went back to look for your wallet, you almost stumbled onto where it was, as a matter of fact. I buried him close to the road. A few others over the years are in those woods. In fact I heard about the festival when I was on another trip d
own there. Then, there was the man’s son . . . I buried him with his father. I got lucky. No one knew who they were. I sold the farm to a nice guy named Jim and that was it. It was a mess to deal with, but I dealt with it. Just like I always have.’

  My mind refused to accept all of this – confusion reigned within me, as I tried to comprehend what he was telling me. It didn’t make any sense. There was no part of me that thought Chris was anything like this.

  That there was evil in him.

  He was just my friend. How could he be . . . this?

  ‘I thought it was all over,’ Chris continued, quieter now as he moved out of my eye line. ‘Then Stuart starts poking around where he wasn’t wanted. I wish it hadn’t gone the way it had – and in the manner it did – but I had no choice. He was always suspicious. Kept asking questions about where I was when he left the tent. Then he called me and asked to meet me. I knew why. He wouldn’t listen to reason. Wouldn’t hear me out. It was . . . it was an accident.’

  ‘You killed Stuart.’

  ‘It wasn’t supposed to be that way. I didn’t even hear the train coming. I wanted to deal with it in a different way. He fought with me and then . . . and then it was over. I almost went under with him, but I got out of the way in time. If he had just disappeared, maybe he would have been the only one. If I’d had more time to speak to him, I could have ruled everyone else out. I couldn’t be sure that he hadn’t said anything to Michelle though. That’s when it all fell apart. Now, you all have to go. You all know too much. I have to protect myself.’

  I could hear sadness in his voice, but I didn’t believe it. I moved my head so I could see him again. He was six feet away – his face in shadow as the candlelight burned around me. ‘You said you wanted to go to the police. We can still do that. I can help you.’

  He chuckled, but there was no humour to it. A sad sound in the silence. ‘If only it were that simple. I wanted you to go to the police. I would have disappeared. Now, I have to do something I never wanted.’

  I tried to move again, but it was no use. I was stuck there and I knew this was it. I had no option left if he wouldn’t listen to me.