Vengeance Child

by Simon Clark

  But here there were no city suburbs. Her parents were long dead. She’d not seen Andrew in twenty years. Yet all those issues she should be considering rationally evaporated. The conundrum of the past suddenly gatecrashing the present was blocked by the sheer pulse-racing excitement of seeing twenty-year-old Andrew Derby waiting astride his BMW bike. Her heart filled with a warm tide of pure love for the man again. Other than the child there was no one else about. Only her first boyfriend sat astride the motorbike as deer ambled by them. Normally, they were so shy they’d flee at even a glimpse of a human. Tonight they were unperturbed. As the fable goes: if the Saban enter the village they bring miracles on their horns. Tonya smiled down at Andrew. He returned it with a heart-warming grin of his own. As always, still so completely patient. He’d wait hours for her without a word of complaint.

  ‘Tonya, I’m jealous. You’ve found something more fascinating than me.’ Richard walked toward the window, clearly intrigued by what fascinated her.

  ‘The deer?’ Her mind was racing. ‘Oh, they’ve gone now.’

  ‘But what are you looking at?’ He closed in on the window.

  She gave him a smouldering look. ‘I’m looking at you, handsome.’

  God, did that sound false or what? But whatever you do, don’t let Richard see Andrew. Despite the impossible scene outside, and all the questions that threatened to burst her bubble of happiness like ‘how can Andrew be on the island?’ and ‘why hasn’t he aged in the last twenty years?’ she fiercely suppressed any doubt. Come to that, she crushed rational thought entirely. Seeing Andrew out there on the bike, just like old times again, had gifted her the happiest moment in years. If Richard sees Andrew everything will be spoilt. As Andrew smiled she held up three fingers. Give me three minutes.

  ‘If those animals become a pest they’ll have to put cattle grids in the roads,’ Richard said as he reached out to pull back the blind.

  Before he could look out and ruin everything Tonya turned to him. With her mouth on his she desperately pushed him back to the bed. Breaking the kiss, she panted, ‘I thought we were going to finish what we started?’ For a moment she feared Richard would insist on looking out. However, the rub of her hand soon aroused him enough not to give a damn if even the Welsh national choir was marching down the street, singing at the tops of their voices. With a grunt he settled back on to the bed. Tonya glanced at the clock. Three minutes past midnight. Richard stroked her nipples. They were still hard from the attack of goosebumps when she saw Andrew. Now she knew what she must do. Before her husband could roll his masculine weight on to her she sat astride him, her inner thighs clamping against his hips. Quickly, she positioned herself so she could slide on to him. She needed to control the pace of sex tonight. The sooner this miserable, life-deadening man climaxed, the sooner she could leave the house.

  Tonya rocked against him hard. She made all the right noises. She moaned when he kneaded her breasts. When he came with that pretend roar of his that normally annoyed the hell out of her, she closed her eyes in bliss as she pictured Andrew waiting so patiently for her. In twenty seconds Richard had turned over. Soon he began to snore, his legs twitching every now and again. Tonya didn’t want to hurt the miracle by thinking it through in a logical way. In a silent whirlwind of activity she slipped on her jeans, zipped shut a pink leather jacket over her naked top half, applied lipstick, added a spray of perfume, then brushed her hair. So, it had been more than three minutes. But then good things take a little longer.

  Elsewhere on Siluria Jay visited more residents. A bright moon turned the River Severn to liquid silver. Trees on the island were hunched beast-like shapes that seemed to gather pools of moon shadow to them. Nearly all the houses lay in darkness. Jay, the boy with the elfin face, reached into these quiet homes like a child reaching into boxes full of delicate butterflies. He tried so hard to do the right thing and not cause damage, but like a child touching fragile wings his innocent intervention wreaked an ugly carnage.

  When Gerald Moore closed the mirrored door of the bathroom cabinet he saw the boy in the reflection. At seventy-five, Gerald still had pinpoint sharp vision. So what on earth’s a child doing in my bathroom at midnight? Such an odd-looking boy, too. Surely, I’ve never seen anyone with eyes as large as that, have I?

  As Gerald turned round he was struck by vertigo. Just for an instant he seemed to be in a hospital room and in his bathroom simultaneously. And the symptoms of senile dementia are? His attempt to make light of an increasingly disturbing vision. The boy had vanished. Instead, his wife stood there in the centre of an otherwise empty hospital room. She was connected to a machine by tubes that pumped vivid red fluids into her neck.

  ‘Lydia?’ He stared. There was a youthful freshness about her. Since his wife died three years ago he always pictured her as a young woman. Not the exhausted figure that had lain as limp as an empty nightdress on the bed. ‘Lydia, you know this isn’t right. You mustn’t come back here.’

  Gerald swayed as she smiled warmly. Around him the walls fluctuated between those of his bathroom and the hospital room where he held his wife’s hand as she died. By now she looked all of twenty-five.

  Brightly, she announced, ‘Darling, I’m better now. I wanted to make you happy by showing you how well I am.’

  ‘The symptoms of dementia are . . .’ He swallowed. ‘Damn, I can’t remember what the symptoms of dementia are.’

  ‘Now, Gerald . . .’ Crimson fluids raced through the transparent tubes into her neck. ‘I know you yearned with all your heart that I could be unhooked from this awful machine, which distressed you so much. And for me to say with a big, bright smile, “Look, Gerald, I’m all better.” You pictured me saying that, didn’t you?’

  He groaned. ‘More times than you can imagine.’

  ‘Well, then, look, Gerald, I’m all better.’

  He whispered, ‘You’re not, my dear. Your heart muscle wasted away. The doctors couldn’t do anything. I wished they could – oh, how hard I wished.’

  ‘Your wishes have come true.’ Vivacious, she clasped her hands together. ‘Aren’t you pleased?’

  ‘You are dead, Lydia. I’ve come to terms with that. Now, I’m either dreaming or my mind has gone.’

  She reached up, grabbed the tubes that carried fluid into her neck, and pulled. ‘Just as you wished for. I don’t need these any more.’

  In the background the boy with the large eyes watched them. Gerald felt he’d seen him somewhere before. The school trip to the island? Or the party from Badsworth Lodge? With a sucking sound the plastic tubes parted from the incision in his wife’s neck.

  He shook his head. ‘Lydia, what’s dead is dead. Despite what I wished for, you mustn’t come back to me.’

  ‘I thought I could make you happy for one last time before you die.’

  Gerald frowned. The voice wasn’t his wife’s. It seemed to come from the boy, standing there in the shadows.

  Then his wife’s voice returned with the clarity of a bell. ‘Gerald, you asked about my heart. There’s nothing to worry about. Look.’

  Then, as if she lifted a T-shirt from the bottom by its hem to show her bare chest, Lydia pinched her skin on her midriff then raised it. Up over her bare ribs. Then she parted the bones like she was opening a jacket. It exposed a beating heart: fresh, healthy and red from which veins sprang. ‘Look,’ she purred. ‘Good as new.’

  Gerald recoiled. His heel caught the corner of the bathtub. When he slammed down backwards the top half of his head crunched against the china lavatory bowl with so much force both ceramic and bone shattered. He’d always joked that he’d hate to be found dead in the bathroom. Now there was nothing he could do to change just that.

  Tonya Fletcher wrapped her arms round the leather-clad torso of Andrew. The island lanes were a blur. Andrew wove the machine skilfully through the twists and turns. The wind blew through her hair. She knew she should have donned a helmet but tonight she didn’t care. She was blissfully happy. In fact, so happy
she refused to question the reality of the situation. Her old boyfriend was back. They were riding his bike just like when they were twenty years old. That’s all that mattered. Life blazed through her with all that wonderful excitement she’d not felt in a long time.

  ‘I love you,’ she shouted over the roar of the motorbike. ‘I love you! And I’m never going back there! This time we’re staying together for ever and ever!’

  Now Cynthia Huddleston was confined to a wheelchair she wished she could go swimming with her school friends in Horseshoe Bay again. As the hoot of an owl sounded on the night air she found herself standing ankle deep in the river.

  ‘Horseshoe Bay,’ she murmured in wonder.

  Moonlight twinkled on waves as the tide drew the waters down to the sea. Fallen branches from upstream raced by. An otter surged with the rapid current, then let itself enjoy the high-speed ride. Nearby, a boy regarded her with an air of expectation.

  He expects me to speak, so I will. ‘I am eighty-five years old. My dearest wish is to swim with my friends again.’ Cynthia frowned at her legs. ‘Of course, I can’t really be here. For one I can’t walk. Oh, well, at my age if one experiences a dream as authentic as this one, I should make the most of it.’ In the moonlit waters she saw a pair of fifteen-year-old girls laughing and splashing one another. ‘Joan. Harriet. Wait for me!’ Cynthia hurried toward her old friends. Within five paces the water reached her waist. ‘So refreshing,’ she said, surprised, ‘and so unlike a dream.’ After another five paces the water supported her body. Another step deeper, the current caught hold and rushed her away into the night.

  ‘I wish my uncle would stop looking at me.’ The thirteen-year-old island girl confided in the boy who found her hiding in the barn. ‘I know he watches me through the keyhole in the bathroom door.’ Chelsea shuddered. ‘Lately he’s come into my bedroom to stare once he thinks I’m asleep.’ Her eyes moistened. ‘He scares me. I know he wants to do something wrong.’ The church clock struck the half hour. ‘He’ll be coming home now. I’ll hide in here until he’s gone to sleep.’ The shudder ran through her again. ‘I just wish he’d stop looking at me.’

  The door of the barn banged.

  ‘Chelsea!’ Her uncle’s soused voice echoed from the walls. ‘Chelsea, stop running away from me. I just want to talk to you.’ A man lumbered through the barn. Strangely, he seemed to be pursuing a figure she couldn’t see in the gloom. And he’d mistaken that figure for her. ‘Chelsea, come here. I need to talk!’ He lurched past where she hid behind the bales of straw. She saw those gleaming eyes of his that always made a point of fixing on her these days. That stare was like being touched by slimy hands. ‘Chelsea. There’s something on my mind.’ He lumbered to where implements lay on racks at the far end of the barn. And just as he did seem to see a Chelsea running from him he appeared unable to see those racks of farming tools. For the first time those hard, gleaming eyes of his let him down. He raced full pelt into a pitchfork that jutted from the rack. Its two prongs found his eyes with uncanny accuracy.

  By the time he’d staggered, screaming, into the farmyard Chelsea realized those eyes would stare at her no more.

  As Tonya rode pillion behind Andrew, her breasts pressing luxuriously against his back, she glimpsed many a strange sight. Despite it being after midnight dozens of people were out walking. Most were in their nightclothes. A few even gleamed nude in the moonlight. When the Saban come to town they bring miracles on their horns. These people are having their wishes granted.

  Being so close to her first love again made her so relaxed she found herself slipping into a warm, drowsy state as he powered along the island’s narrow lanes. She saw Bessie Gwyllam dressed in white pyjamas. Tonya Fletcher knew that Bessie had been searching for her late father’s will for ten years. The woman was adamant one existed. Until she found it she couldn’t prove that the house she lived in was really hers. For the past decade she’d been forced to pay her half-sister rent for the property. Bessie believed a will would place the ownership of her home securely in her hands. Then she could tell her detested half-sister to go to hell. From the back of the motorbike Tonya saw Bessie dancing on the lawn in the moonlight. In her hand was a sealed envelope, no doubt covered with fluffy cobwebs from being hidden away. And no doubt the envelope would bear in grave black print: Last Will and Testament of Robert Allen Gwyllam.

  Though the words were lost in the engine’s roar, Tonya called out joyously. ‘It really is a night for miracles. We’re all having our wishes granted.’ She patted Andrew’s firm back. ‘Look at Mr Henry. He convinced himself there’s a box of gold coins buried under the beach. Now he’s going to find it.’ Old Mr Henry, with a coat over his pyjamas, a shovel in one hand, and a lantern in the other, followed a boy down to the shore. It was the same boy she’d seen before with the almond-shaped eyes.

  Tonya luxuriated in being so close to Andrew once more. All those thousands of times she’d thought, I wish I was back with Andrew Derby again . . . Tonya blinked. She realized the sound of the motorbike’s engine had vanished. She blinked again. The bike had gone. And Andrew, too. For some reason she stood in a garden, one overgrown with nettles and brambles. Right in front of her was a window to a living room. A man had slumped in an armchair with a bottle of vodka. He was as untidy as the lousy room. Clothes dishevelled, hair stuck up in greasy spikes from being unwashed for so long. Stubble covered his blotchy jaw.

  Tonya noticed a slight figure in the moonlight beside her.

  ‘It’s you again,’ she said to the boy. ‘You’re doing this, aren’t you? You’re making everyone’s wishes come true.’ A chill spread through her. ‘So why are you showing me this? Where’s Andrew?’

  The boy said nothing. In the moonlight his eyes appeared to burn with an eerie fire. A dangerous fire that could cause untold harm.

  Tonya shivered. ‘I know you’ve brought me here. Just like you found Mr Henry’s treasure for him, and you showed Bessie Gwyllam where to find her father’s will.’

  ‘I took them for a walk,’ murmured the boy. His expressionless face gleamed with perspiration. ‘Just a little walk.’

  ‘You made their dreams come true.’

  ‘I can do that. But it’s not my fault that it goes wrong for them. Miss Gwyllam’s crying. She found a letter that gives the house to her sister. Mr Henry dug the hole in the beach. He found a box full of money, then thought there’d be another one further down, so he wouldn’t stop digging. The sides of the hole were all wet and sloppy. They fell on him. He can’t get out.’

  A flood of shivers cascaded down her spine. ‘But you did a good thing for me. You brought Andrew back to me, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’ A powerful emotion worked inside the boy but his expression didn’t so much as flicker. It was all in his eyes.

  With a growing sense of dread Tonya held on to her lovely miracle. Andrew was back. She’d leave Richard. Andrew would love her all over again. Memories of those sex-filled nights with her first boyfriend made her heart beat faster. Think about all those soft kisses. Focus on those and this ominous sense of dread will go.

  Forcing a smile, she said, ‘So, what have you done with Andrew?’

  The boy glanced toward the window.

  Tonya found herself looking at the shambles of a room. The man there sucked on the vodka bottle. ‘No, don’t you dare. That’s not Andrew. He’s younger than that, he’s . . .’ But what’s the use? Disappointment plunged through her. Of course the man is Andrew. It’s twenty years since I’ve seen him. She regarded the drunken wreck of a forty-year-old Andrew Derby. She recognized the tattoo: his initials entwined with hers on the back of the paw that held the booze. He’d gone crazy with the tattoos. Red lines like badly drawn serpents entwined his bare arm.

  ‘Why did you show me Andrew like this?’

  The boy’s eyes burned.

  ‘What a cruel . . . monstrous thing to do. Do you know the harm you’ve caused?’ Tears rolled down her face. ‘I wanted to remember
Andrew as he was. Did you do it to punish me? Because I had this rose-tinted memory of him? So now you hurt me by showing him as a middle-aged piss artist!’ Anger made her voice rise. ‘My husband would love this, you know. Seeing me cry like a baby because yet another dream I had has been ripped to shreds.’ Bunching her fists, she glared back through the window. The bloated alcoholic slumped in his chair. A burned-out loser that nobody loved. So what happened to the wife? Probably fled the marital home when his boozing got out of control. Tonya searched the figure for some hint that the old Andrew remained. The fine line of Andrew’s jaw that made him so handsome had degenerated into hanging jowl. The nose had become blotchy. Only his grey eyes hadn’t aged. Despite the vodka binges, they were still clear. But what possessed him to have those weird serpent tattoos done? Only when she looked again she realized they weren’t tattoos. They were streaks of red . . . some liquid, maybe. She moved closer to the glass so she could see the arms more clearly in the light of the table lamp.