Six Days, Six Hours, Six Minutes

by Alex Smith

  “The police were here,” the man said. He didn’t move, looking once again like a hole in the universe, something impossible, something that should not be here. Only that little package beneath his arm showed any sign of life, a bundle that squirmed against the man’s unbearable strength. Blake put both hands on his head, fingers clenched in his hair. He knew that strength, he could still feel the pain from when he’d been on the sofa, when it felt like the devil could push down with a single finger and snap his neck like a matchstick. How much force would it take to crush a baby’s skull?

  He took a step forward but the man must have done something, Connor’s screams blasting out with even more force. Blake stepped back again, pacing from side to side like a cornered dog.

  “It wasn’t about this,” he said. “I swear, it had nothing to do with this. I thought I’d lost my wallet, that was all. I didn’t talk to them, not at the mall and not here. I wouldn’t.”

  But you should have, Blake, because they could have been here now, could have pounced from the shadows and arrested him.

  “I wouldn’t,” he said again. “I know you’re watching me. Please.”

  The man stood there, breathing like a bear. Connor’s cries were dwindling, the kid running out of oxygen.

  Fuckfuckfuck.

  He should rush him. He was unarmed but he had fingers he could gouge with, he had fists he could hit with and teeth he could bite with.

  But what if he was too slow? What if the man squeezed his arm and he heard the soft snap of Connor’s spine?

  “Please,” he whispered, his voice his one pathetic weapon.

  Connor groaned, then fell quiet, but Blake could still see the kid’s legs kicking out at whatever he was wrapped in. The devil stood statue still, those eyes like skull eyes in the dark.

  Then he moved, fast, his arm uncurling like a catapult and launching Connor across the room. He didn’t even look to see where he had thrown him, the bundle thudding into the cushions of the sofa and rolling down hard. There were no longer any cries, but Blake didn’t have time to run to his son because the man was coming right for him, covering the living room in two giant strides, one big, dirty hand suddenly clamped over Blake’s mouth, pressing against his teeth, tasting of spoilt milk. The other grabbed the back of his head, both hands enveloping him, pushing him down.

  Blake fought to keep himself standing but the pulled muscle in his back twanged at the force of it, like it might snap. He could do nothing as the man pushed him lower and lower. His feet kicked at the floor like a hanged man, squeaking on the wood. He reached up and tried to find him but there was only cloth, so greasy that it felt warm to the touch. He dug his fingers into it, looking for flesh, looking for anything, finding nothing.

  His head was being crushed, streaks of stroke-light ripping across the darkness. He tried to inhale but the man had pinched his nose between thumb and forefinger and there was only meat. When he attempted to empty his lungs into a scream it burst against the man’s hand, bubbling pathetically. He waved his hands in wild circles trying to make contact.

  The man held him there, angled above the floor. Then he leaned in, seeming to fold his whole body around Blake as he moved closer. His face pushed into Blake’s neck, into the tender, clean skin there. He could feel his bristles, feel the wet flesh of his lips against him, could feel the flow of air as the man took a huge, sweeping inward breath through his nose, a breath that seemed to go on forever, that seemed as if it might suck Blake inside him. The graveyard smell engulfed him and he almost lost his mind to it, his whole body seizing in a convulsive ecstasy of terror.

  Then the force around his head loosened, and the hermetic seal around his mouth vanished. Blake hit the floor face first, an explosion of light followed by a gulping rush of air that made his lungs burn. He dug his nails into the carpet, each breath a scream, each breath seeming to drag him away from death and back into the real world, like a man climbing over the top of a precipice.

  He rolled onto his back, his legs curled up against his stomach to protect him, one arm over his face and the other sweeping through the darkness, trying to find the man. His vision was still full of false light, the room a snowstorm, and he blinked against it, searching.

  The devil had gone. The room empty except for Blake and—

  Connor.

  Blake pushed himself up, a flood of bile suddenly washing into his mouth. He gagged as he swallowed it back down, as he ran across a living room that suddenly seemed to be three miles wide. Connor was a bag of broken things on the sofa, perfectly quiet, and Blake snatched him up, ripping the rags from his face—don’t be dead, oh god please don’t be dead—to see the boy’s face staring up at him, his eyes pools of tears, his quivering mouth gulping air before releasing a shrill, awful, beautiful cry.

  Blake crushed him against his chest, holding him as tight as he could, wishing he could pull him inside his own skin to keep him safe. The room spun around him in a sweeping, vertiginous arc and he sat down before he fell, both of them fighting for breath together, as if they had just climbed out of a churning river.

  Behind it all, at the very edge of his consciousness, Blake heard the sound of the front door close, the Yale snapping shut. Then there was a soft, rolling click as the man locked the mortice behind him.

  Thirty

  It seemed a million years later that Julia walked into the living room, wiping her eyes with her fists then staring at Blake like she couldn’t believe it was him. He saw her reach for the light switch and he called out, gently.

  “Don’t.”

  Her hand hovered there for a moment, then slapped back to her side. Connor was asleep—he’d dropped off remarkably quickly after everything that had happened, especially as Blake had poked and prodded him looking for any sign of injury. But that wasn’t why Blake wanted the lights to stay off. He needed the dark around him like a cloak, like a hood, so that his wife wouldn’t see the wreck of a man in front of her. So she wouldn’t think he was a stranger.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, sniffing. “And what’s that smell?”

  “I don’t know,” he whispered. And again came that need to tell her. Julia, we have to go. I know you think I’m crazy but we have to get in the car and just drive, because if we don’t then somebody will kill us. But he knew that if those words spilled from his mouth then somehow the devil would hear them. The lock would rattle again and the door would swing open and that would be that. “The drains maybe. I’ll sort it in the morning.”

  Connor started to wriggle at the sound of voices, snuffling in his sleep. God only knew what horrors would haunt his dreams tonight. Blake hugged him as tight as he dared, running a thumb up and down the velvet soft skin of his leg.

  “He woke up,” Blake said. “Something must have scared him. I didn’t want to wake you so I brought him down here. He’s okay.”

  Almost suffocated, then tossed away like rubbish, but okay.

  Julia leaned against the doorframe, perfectly still, her face hidden in shadow. For an instant Blake wasn’t sure it was even her, he had the idea that if the lights were suddenly flicked on he’d see the devil man there, or one of his followers, dressed in Julia’s slip, wearing her hair, grinning. He screwed his eyes shut, took a breath, opened them again.

  “Sorry if we disturbed you,” he said.

  She didn’t reply, she yawned and walked over, crashing beside him and curling her feet up beneath her. She rested her head on his shoulder, one arm wrapped around the kid. It was warm down here, and within a minute or two she fell asleep.

  Blake rested his head against the back of the sofa. He knew that sleep would be further away than ever, and that was a good thing, because if he fell under now then what would he wake up to? No, better to stay awake, to watch over them. The locks were compromised, but maybe he could put something in front of the door, an early warning signal? He cradled Connor in one arm and walked carefully through the dark, grabbing the kid’s highchair from the kitchen and propping
it at an angle against the front door so that it would topple at the slightest movement.

  Satisfied, he eased himself next to Julia again and prepared to stay awake. There was something about the weight of his wife against him, though, the comforting heat of Connor on his stomach. He pulled them closer, drowning in them, and before he even knew it, he was lost.

  MONDAY

  Thirty-One

  “Fuck!”

  The word was a depth charge in Blake’s dreams, an explosion that propelled him back towards the surface.

  “Fuck!”

  He kicked his way out of sleep into the brightness of the day. He had no idea where he was, everything unfamiliar, too bright.

  “Fuck, Blake!”

  Julia was there, dressed in her slip, standing in the middle of the living room like she couldn’t remember where she was either. She ran to the window, then through the door, yelling, “Fucking fuck, look at the time!”

  Blake frowned, seeing Connor still fast asleep at the other end of the sofa. The sight of his son there, the thought that he might not have survived the night, snapped Blake’s heart in two. He squinted at the clock on the mantelpiece, next to the baby monitor, and swore. It was coming up for half eight.

  He stood, grabbing the arm of the sofa to steady himself in a rush of dizziness. And just like that the events of the night stampeded back into his brain. He closed his eyes—don’t remember it, don’t think about it, it didn’t happen—and walked from the room.

  It had happened, though. His lips were cut from where the devil man’s hand had pushed them into his teeth, and the back of his neck was killing him. Actually, thinking about it, everything ached, like he’d spent the night running an obstacle course. He’d been using every single muscle to try to escape the man’s grip. Not that it had done any good. He’d been like a child, a puppet.

  His smell was there too, pervading every corner of the house, a creeping mould that would soon infest everything. Blake wiped a sticky hand over his face, feeling nauseous as he opened the kitchen door. Doof was there in a shot, up on his hind legs and clawing at the stairgate, his eyes so wide they might have rolled out.

  “Alright, mate,” Blake said, tickling his wrinkled forehead and scratching the congealed wound on his neck.

  The dog started running in circles and Blake’s face creased into a painful smile. He crossed the hall to the front door, trying the handle. It was locked tight, like he knew it would be, and the highchair still rested there. The man had a key, he still had a key, even though the locks had been changed. Blake glanced at the dish next to the kitchen door, seeing his keys there and Julia’s too.

  He gritted his teeth. He knew there had been something off with the locksmith, something in his shifty nature, in the way he couldn’t remember the name of the company he worked for. But Blake had called a number at random, there was no way the man could have known which company he was going to use, not unless he controlled every single one in the city.

  Not unless he heard you make the call.

  Goosebumps crept up his arms and he wrapped them around himself, like he was standing in a gale. That was impossible too, right? How could he have heard the conversation? He would have needed to be inside the house, or…

  Blake scanned the hall, wondering if the man had somehow bugged them. It seemed ludicrous, but then everything about this situation was ludicrous, and if the man could somehow get hold of their keys and make copies before this all started, if he could steal Julia’s phone, if he knew where Julia’s parents lived and where Blake worked, then what else was he capable of? He might have been listening to him right now, hearing the stillness of the house, hearing the slow, clumsy thunk of his brain as it tried to figure out what was going on.

  He might be watching, too.

  Blake ran his hand along the sill above the front door. Nothing. He lifted the photo frames from the wall, checking behind them, realising as he did so that he had no idea what a bug would look like, other than something from a James Bond movie. He crossed to the key dish, lifting it and looking underneath. He checked the light fitting in the ceiling, his fingers coming away with nothing but grime. Then to the cupboard beneath the stairs, pulling the cord for the light and scanning the bare wood, the junk they stuffed in there. There was no sign of anything out of place.

  He closed the cupboard door, coughing the dust out of his lungs. Julia was clattering down the stairs doing up the buttons on her shirt. Her hair was a mess and she had hairclips wedged between her lips. She grunted something at him.

  “Huh?” he said. She pulled the clips out and fixed them in place, trying to slip her feet into her shoes at the same time.

  “I said you’ll need to drop Conn off, make sure he eats something before he goes. And Blake, get to work, you’re going to be so late.”

  “Yeah, sure,” he said. He grabbed her coat from the cupboard and passed it to her, leaning in for a kiss. She recoiled, horrified.

  “Yeah, right,” she said, shrugging on her coat. “You look like you’ve been rooting around with the dog. I’ll see you later.”

  “Julia,” he said. She stood in the doorway, looking back. And once again he had no idea what to say to her. He knew that if he told her too much, if he told her what had happened last night, then she’d go straight to the police. There would be no talking her out of it. And maybe she’s right? Isn’t that what any sane person would do?

  Maybe. Maybe not. Blake glanced around, thinking about the bug, about who might be listening.

  “Just be safe, okay?” he said. “Stay at the hospital. Call me if you need me.”

  She raised an eyebrow like he’d spoken to her in Swahili.

  “Sure, Blake.”

  She lifted the highchair out of the way—giving him another questioning glance—and fled from the house, bolting up the path. Blake closed the door behind her, walking into the kitchen and looking into the little makeup mirror that Julia kept on the windowsill. His face was streaked with filth, his lips bloodied, his nostrils blackened from where the man had pinched him. The devil’s print was still there, fingermarks so black that they might have been burned into his flesh.

  He turned on the tap and scrubbed at his face with scalding water, using washing-up liquid to clean himself. He scratched at his skin with his nails, eradicating every trace of the man’s touch and then washing again, and again, panicked, as if he was trying to rid himself of a disease before it took hold. Only when his face was in agony and the mirror was drenched in steam did he stop, his hands shaking.

  He turned off the water and stood over the sink, waiting for the inevitable. It spewed up from inside him and he vomited into the basin, acid searing a path up his nose. He retched again, producing nothing but a dribble, then filled a cup with water and swallowed the lot.

  Connor was crying now, and Blake made his way back to him, not wanting him to roll off the sofa. He scooped him up and carried him to the bathroom, running a shallow bath and letting the kid sit there in a cushion of bubbles until he, too, had lost every hint of foulness. There was no sign of bruising, which seemed miraculous given that he’d been clamped against the devil’s side then thrown onto the sofa.

  By the time they were both washed and dressed it had gone nine. Blake’s phone had rung three times now, Harold chasing him, probably ready to give him formal notice of termination. But Blake didn’t care. His job didn’t matter anymore, nothing mattered anymore, other than Julia and Connor and his own life. No, he wasn’t going into work today.

  He had more important things to do.

  Thirty-Two

  The rain had started again by the time he’d dropped Connor at the hospital nursery, heavier this time, as if making up for the couple of hours of clear sky that morning. Blake sat in the car park, the windscreen wipers drumming from side to side so fast it was almost making him seasick. He ran his hands through his hair and they came away wet from the minute or two it had taken him to run into the building and back.

  If
he did get through this, if he made it past Thursday with everything intact, he was moving to the desert.

  He glanced over at the nursery again, wondering if it was okay to leave Connor there and deciding that it was. There were security teams everywhere at the hospital, and he’d let them know that morning that Connor wasn’t to leave with anyone that wasn’t him or Julia—not that they’d ever let that happen.

  So what’s the plan? he asked himself, chewing at his thumbnail.

  “Do something,” he answered aloud.

  And that was it, that was the only thing he had. Do something. Anything. He spat out a nail, dropping his hand to his lap so that he wouldn’t chew it down to the quick. Something was boiling inside his gut, a fury—not just at the devil man, or the situation, but at himself. How many times had he been presented with an opportunity to do something about this? How many times had the guy been standing right in front of him?

  All he’d needed to do was grab a knife, or the poker, or a hammer. One clean jab, a lucky hit, and all this would be over. Sure, the police would ask him questions—why did you kill him, why didn’t you come to us?—but the man would have been an intruder who threatened his family, and any investigation would surely be a formality. Adam said he knew some detectives with Norfolk Constabulary, he would help out for sure.

  But that wasn’t the only thing he could have done. Why the hell hadn’t he gone out and bought an alarm system? It would have gone off the moment the devil man set foot inside the house, it would have given him time to get Connor and lock them all somewhere safe. An alarm wasn’t breaking the rules. Shit, he could have got a CCTV system too, rigged it up in the living room. Then he’d have evidence that the man had been inside, that he’d tried to hurt a child. He could have taken that to the police and they’d have had no choice but to arrest him.