Six Days, Six Hours, Six Minutes

by Alex Smith

  He told her about the photos in his office being changed, about the windows opening in the house, the mud in the bed. He told her about the delivery driver hanging around outside their house, about Homebase. He told her how he’d found Doof, almost dead. He sobbed as he told her he’d walked down the stairs to see the man holding Connor in their living room.

  That was the point that his words seemed to sink in. He saw the change in Julia, the way she stopped frowning at him like he was a madman and actually started listening.

  “He threw him?” she asked, her gloves stained red. The top three knife wounds were sutured and she hovered over the last, her hands trembling. Blake wasn’t sure if he could take any more, the pain like nothing he had ever felt in his life. So he talked in order to blur it out, in order to distract himself. He told her yes, the man had thrown their son across the room. Then he told her about the Nevills, about Elizabeth and her slaughtered children. He told her how he’d gone to Adam, how they’d met in the woods, and how Adam had offered to help.

  And there he stopped, exhausted, feeling as though he had emptied every last part of himself. Julia tied the surgical thread into a knot and cut it, wiping the sealed wound with a fresh cloth. Then she pulled off her gloves and looked at him.

  “There’s more,” she said matter-of-factly, nodding at his mutilated body, at the bruises that had bloomed across his stomach and back. Her eyes were cold, her mouth a narrow line pencilled across her face. She had battened down the hatches, Blake knew. She’d barricaded herself inside. But the pressure would be building. He’d seen it before. The harder she fought to stay cool, the worse the explosion would be.

  Blake sat up, the pain roaring through him like a chainsaw. He looked out of the window—nothing much to see from here other than a grey sky, the tops of some trees trying to peek inside. It was so quiet that they might have been the only people in the entire hospital.

  “Adam’s dead,” he said softly.

  Julia didn’t reply. She got off the bed and dumped the needle and the rest of the wire into the trash, then walked to the sink and washed her hands, coating them with chemical soap. She leaned against the counter, her face hidden. He could hear her breathing, slow and deep and unsteady.

  “They hanged him,” said Blake. “In his flat. There were four of them this time, three I’d met before and somebody else. I tried to stop them, but I couldn’t. They hanged him, and they stabbed me, and they left.”

  He thought of Adam swinging from the ceiling, his tongue poking out obscenely, piss dripping from his trouser legs. He wanted to cry, he felt like he should cry, but his emotions were strangely numb, like somebody had flicked a switch. Julia didn’t move.

  “That’s it,” he said. “I came straight here.”

  Still nothing. Outside, a siren blipped twice then started wailing, an ambulance gunning away from the hospital. A smattering of rain blew against the window like a handful of gravel, as if somebody was trying to get their attention from below.

  “I’m sorry, Julia,” he said when she didn’t speak. “I should have told you from the start, should have told someone. But I thought…”

  Thought what, thought that you could beat him? Thought that he might leave you alone? Thought it was a hoax?

  “You thought it would go away,” she said, speaking to the wall.

  And she was right. That’s what he’d hoped more than anything. Keep your head down, don’t rock the boat, and it will all just go away.

  “You thought it would go away,” she said. “Because that’s what you do.”

  She turned to face him. Her entire body was shaking, the first tremors before an earthquake. She wrapped her arms around herself, her hands balled into fists. He half expected her to storm across the room and start punching him, to rip at his wounds, to finish what the devil had started. But she didn’t move, didn’t even blink.

  “Connor could have died,” she said, her voice the softest of whispers. “That man was in our house.”

  Blake opened his mouth to reply but nothing came out. He sucked air like a landed fish. What was he supposed to say? That he had everything under control? He swung his legs off the side of the bed just so he wouldn’t feel so exposed. The IV stand rattled, the needle tugging in his flesh.

  “I needed to know what I was dealing with,” he said. “Before I called the police. I couldn’t rush into it. I couldn’t risk anything happening to you and Connor.”

  Julia shook her head.

  “He told me if I spoke to anyone then he’d come after you both. I couldn’t let that happen.”

  “So what is your plan, Blake?” she said. “How exactly are you going to fix it? You’ve got four knife wounds. And Adam’s dead. Christ. This isn’t going to go away. We have to go to the police. We need to go and get Connor and take him somewhere safe, at least until they get this arsehole behind bars.” She seemed to turn three shades paler. “Does he know where Connor’s nursery is?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, then realised it was a lie. “Yeah, yeah he does. He knows everything.”

  “And you just left him there?” she said, her face creasing with disgust. Blake looked away, his stomach roiling. Every decision he’d made in the last few days seemed ridiculous, pathetic, utterly selfish. He had left Connor there knowing that the man might turn up, stroll inside, and take him.

  “I thought he was safe as long as I stuck to the rules,” he said, pleading.

  “But you didn’t stick to them, Blake. You put him directly in harm’s way. Come on. Didn’t you fucking think?”

  He said nothing, swallowing what felt like a lump of hot coal. He only looked up again when he heard Julia’s shoes tapping on the floor.

  “I’m calling the police,” she said, making for the door. “And I’m going to get Conn.”

  “Just wait,” he said, struggling to twist his body to face her. She paused, her hand on the door. “The police won’t be able to stop it, Julia. I know that. He has it all planned out. I think it’s what he’s counting on. I think he wants us to call them.” He took a deep, burning breath. “He’s done this before. If that kid Daniel was right he’s done this a lot. He’s killed… I don’t know, Jules, but he’s killed a lot of people. I think if I’d gone to the police then he’d have…”

  He stopped, not wanting to say it in case he somehow made it real. Julia kept her hand on the door, her eyes blazing.

  “So what?” she asked. “We’re just going to wait and see what happens when Thursday rolls around?”

  Blake thought of Daniel Keller without his throat, of the noise that Adam made when the stool was kicked away.

  “No,” he said. “I know he’s going to try to kill us. I think he was always going to. I think this whole six days thing is bullshit. It was just to make me more afraid. It all comes back to fear, it’s what he wants. But he never meant to let us live.”

  Julia finally let go of the door, walking across the room and sitting on the bed. She’d lost all of her colour, now practically invisible against the pale, sickly hospital walls. She wiped a shaking hand across her face.

  “Could we run?” she asked. “Hide?”

  “He’s insane,” Blake said, putting his hand on hers. She flinched, but she didn’t pull away. He held it tight, feeling the bones of her fingers, as slight and as fragile as a bird’s. He lifted her hand and pressed it against his chest. “I think he’d keep coming no matter what. He thinks he’s a devil, the devil. When I was out at the Nevill house I saw newspaper articles about other killers, men with pig masks, and those guys who kidnapped the newspaper girls in the summer. I think they all know each other, compete with each other, and that makes this real. This is real. People have died, and no matter what we did I don’t think he’d ever have let us go.”

  “He’s not the devil, though,” Julia said. “He’s just a man. He’s just flesh and blood, like us.”

  You haven’t seen him, Blake almost said, thinking of the way the man seemed to be twelve-foot-tall,
the way he filled a room with darkness.

  “He’s just a man,” she said again, looking at him like she was waiting for him to say something, waiting for some kind of answer.

  “Just a man,” he said, nodding. But that wasn’t it, whatever she was expecting him to say. She held his eye and he could sense it there, something that she wanted him to tell her.

  “The police can’t help us,” she said. “We can’t run, we can’t get away, we sure as hell can’t sit on our backsides and wait for it to magically get better. He tried to kill you, Blake.”

  He swallowed hard, shifting his body to try to ease the pain. He could still feel the knife entering his flesh, the way it had punctured him, the way it had scraped along his bone. He knew that if he encountered the man again then the blade would tear through more than just muscle and fat. It would sever arteries, it would empty him out.

  “Blake,” she said, and there was something there she wasn’t saying, something she needed him to say.

  He thought of the devil’s face, his burning eyes, his filthy hands, that big, wet, gaping grin.

  He’s just a man.

  “I know,” he said to her. He clutched her hand even tighter. “We have to kill him.”

  Forty-Nine

  The air seemed to ring with the words, like a bell had been tolled. Julia stared at Blake and he wondered if he’d got it wrong, if she’d expected him to say something else.

  “We have to kill him,” she echoed, and the words didn’t seem real, coming from her mouth. But this was Julia, a surgeon. Death was as big a part of her life as anything else. “If he’s as crazy as you think then we don’t have a choice. He’s latched onto you, Blake. I don’t know why but he’s picked you, he’s obsessed with you. Even if the police did arrest him they might not be able to keep him forever. There’s always a chance he could come back.”

  We have to kill him.

  The thought of taking a life was insane, but nowhere near as crazy as it would have been a week ago.

  “He’s strong,” Blake said, remembering the man’s iron grip, the way he’d pushed the knife into his flesh like Blake’s body was made of packing foam. “Like, freaky strong. And he’s smart. He had keys to the house, he cloned my fucking phone—yours too, probably. He knew everything about us before this even started. I don’t even know if we could do it.”

  “It’s Connor, Blake, we have to do it.”

  “And it’s not just him. There are four of them, at least. There might be more. Dozens maybe.”

  The hopelessness caught him unguarded. He fought it the way he had fought the devil back in Adam’s house, with every ounce of strength he possessed.

  “I don’t know,” he went on. “Maybe it is just him. I mean, if we kill him, I think the rest will stop. Those other guys, they follow him because he’s charismatic, because he’s powerful. He’s like Charles Manson or something. Some of them might even actually think he is what he says he is. If we show them he’s just a man, a dead man, they’ll leave us alone.”

  It was a gamble, but what other choice did they have?

  “We kill him,” Blake said again, trying to make it sink in.

  Julia hopped off the bed and walked to the tray of surgical equipment. She pulled out a handful of scalpels, still wrapped, and a bunch of hypodermics.

  “I’ll grab my stuff,” she said. “Meet you back here in five. We’ll get Conn and then work out what we’re going to do. Yeah?”

  Blake nodded, easing himself off the bed. He could barely lift his left arm, and he couldn’t take a step without feeling like he was going to pass out. What good was he going to be in a fight?

  Julia opened the door and walked into the corridor, only to stop and turn back.

  “So all that stuff about the cancer?”

  “Yeah, sorry,” he replied. “I made it up. I had to cover for all the weird shit. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be,” she said. She walked back into the room, almost running, and wrapped her arms around him. She pressed her face into his neck, her breath warm on his skin. He held her tight with his one good arm, those same sobs hammering at his diaphragm, demanding to be set free. He didn’t want her to pull away, not ever, but she did. “You’re stronger than him, Blake. I know you don’t think you are, but believe me. You’ve been through so much shit, you’ve beaten cancer. Who’s he? Just some prick that can’t think of anything better to do with his time. He pisses like you, shits like you, bleeds like you. He’s human, he’s just a man.”

  She leaned in and kissed him on the lips—just for a second, but Blake could feel her touch long after she pulled away.

  “You’re better than him,” she said. “We can beat him.”

  Then she was gone.

  She returned with a duffel bag, setting it down on the bed and pulling out a fresh purple hoodie. It had University of Oxford written over the chest.

  “It’s Doug’s,” she said, shrugging. “You need it more than him.”

  She unhooked Blake from the IV and helped him pull on the hoodie.

  “Connor’s fine,” she said. “I called nursery to check.”

  She took his arm and led him out of the room, along the maze of corridors to the lift. The blood pack and the painkillers had helped, but Blake still couldn’t move faster than a geriatric walk—anything more than that made his pulse race and the world judder loose from its mountings. They took it slowly, one step at a time, out of the doors and along the pavement until Julia’s car came into view. Blake stopped her before they reached it, leaning against a BMW and catching his breath.

  “I don’t know what else he managed to do,” Blake said. “For all I know your car is bugged. He doesn’t know we know about the phone.”

  “We can use it,” she said. He nodded.

  “If he thinks I’m playing along then maybe, maybe, it will buy us some time,” Blake said. “The only thing I really know is that he likes playing games, he likes scaring people.”

  “He doesn’t want to shoot his wad too early,” she said. Blake almost smiled.

  “Yeah. We can string him along for a bit, until we work out what to do.”

  She helped him up and led him to the car.

  “Let’s grab our boy and get him home,” she said.

  Getting into the car felt like stepping into an acid bath, and Blake had to grit his teeth, locking the cries behind them. Julia rummaged inside the bag and pulled out a packet of painkillers that he didn’t recognise, popping out a couple of giant pills. He swallowed them dry, working them down as she slung the bag in the back and climbed in.

  They drove in silence, just in case. Not that there was much time to talk—Connor’s nursery was only on the other side of campus. Julia stopped the car right outside the door, keeping the engine running. She squeezed Blake’s hand and got out, jogging up the steps and through the big glass doors. He watched her as she approached the desk, as she waved to the receptionist. He watched the woman check something.

  Why was it taking so long?

  Every ounce of warmth was creeping out of Blake’s body, replaced with a cold, inky darkness. Oh god, we’re too late. Somewhere between Julia calling and us arriving the devil showed up. Somehow he got inside, got hold of Connor.

  Julia walked off and the receptionist glanced out of the doors, seeing Blake and waving. Blake waved back, remembering to breathe. A moment later Julia appeared, Connor in her arms, and the relief was so great that Blake’s head was actually ringing with the force of it.

  She loaded the boy into his seat, strapping him in.

  “Let’s get you back, you poorly little thing. I can’t believe they sent you home.”

  Connor couldn’t have understood the lie, but he still looked momentarily confused. He peered at her, then at Blake, as if waiting to be let in on the secret. Then he spotted his own feet and started kicking the chair, laughing his head off.

  Julia got back in. She turned to Blake, and he wasn’t sure how she managed it, how she found the courage to do
it, but she smiled—big and warm and full of love. It seemed to blast away the darkness like a depth charge right in the middle of his soul, rippling outward, purging him. It seemed like the first time in forever that the three of them were together—properly together. He didn’t have to hide anything anymore. Yes, a psychopath was stalking them, a bunch of psychopaths. Yes, people were dead, his best friend was dead, and if they didn’t work out a plan then they’d be dead too in less than forty-eight hours. But right now, at this exact moment in time, they were alive, they were safe, they were a family.

  He would do anything to protect that.

  He would kill to protect that.

  “Come on,” Julia said. “Let’s do this.”

  Fifty

  Julia cut the engine, plunging them into silence. It was just after eleven—although Blake was so tired it could have been nightfall—and a few people were bustling down the pavement, hunched against the rain. The neighbours a couple of doors up were coming out of their house en masse, mum, dad and their three teenage kids. One of the boys shoved another, sending him tripping into the lawn and unleashing a barrage of shouts from both parents.

  It could have been them, Blake thought, watching them sort themselves out then file into their Freelander. The devil might have shown up at their door instead, carved his mark into it. Would their children be cowering in the wardrobe right now? Under the bed?

  They drove away and Blake studied the rest of the street. There was no truck, but who knew what other vehicles they had. He recognised some of the cars, but not all of them. The windscreens were full of dark sky and rain. Any one of them could have held a grinning face, a glinting blade.