Hinton Hollow Death Trip

by Will Carver

  She heard him. She shook her head.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Brady, but you have to let them do their jobs. They just need to take a look at him.’ His voice was calming and reassuring but she still did not budge.

  No one will touch you again, Jacob. Over and over.

  I’ll protect you this time. I promise.

  The detective’s tone changed.

  ‘I’m afraid you don’t really have a choice. We have to check the boy.’ Pace stepped forward and took her wrist in his giant hand. She felt his strength immediately and tried to grip her son harder but lost out. This was the second time a man had overpowered her today.

  The paramedics stepped in as if the move had been rehearsed. They took Jacob and laid him on the ground. Faith screamed and kicked out. Detective Pace said shh in her ear repeatedly. It was the same thing that other man had said before he shot her son. But Pace’s words contained no venom.

  It’s not the same voice. It’s not. Faith Brady had to convince herself of that fact so that something made sense.

  She relented and fell, dead-weight, back into the willowy detective. He held her up and they both watched as the paramedics performed needless tests on the boy with a space in his heart where his mother’s love should have been. The male paramedic gave a sideways glance to Pace and shook his head, his face screwing up to say that it was obvious.

  ‘He’s gone, Mrs Brady. I’m sorry. I know this is difficult but I need to know exactly what happened here.’ Her weight became too much and she dropped to the floor between the feet of the detective.

  Pace moved around to face the mother, crouching down to her level.

  ‘What happened here? Who did this? Which way did they go?’ Each word was spoken clearly, exaggerated enough for a lip-reader to understand from a hundred yards away. He didn’t blink. He didn’t inflect his words with any emotion.

  He wanted answers. He wanted to catch this bastard. He pushed her and pushed her, hoping to snap her from the haze she had dropped into when the bullet hit and the killer ran off.

  But she was unresponsive. She appeared to be in some kind of waking coma. Pace saw her mind was active, probably running through the incident again and again, wondering what she could have done differently.

  He wanted to tell her that he understood. That she would have to learn to think about other things. All the time.

  ‘Mrs Brady. I need to know exactly what happened here today.’ Pace held her steady by her shoulders, resisting the urge to shake her.

  ‘Do you know the person that shot your little boy?’ That was most likely.

  Still nothing.

  Why didn’t she answer? Pace thought she might be protecting someone.

  He stood up. Faith Brady rested in a defeated heap on the ground at his feet, watching the female paramedic prod parts of the son she was supposed to protect with her life.

  Detective Sergeant Pace thought about changing tack. Being comforting. Telling Faith Brady that it was not her fault. But something stopped him.

  I stopped him.

  Faith Brady was as silent as the boy sat a few feet to her left.

  She couldn’t tell him the truth.

  She couldn’t tell anyone. That truth would have to stay between her, the ordinary man, the woods and me.

  She needed more time.

  GETTING ANSWERS

  Detective Sergeant Pace was angry.

  Detective Sergeant Pace had been touched by Evil.

  Detective Sergeant Pace was contagious.

  He knew he should not have manhandled Faith Brady like that but he didn’t care much for protocol when it stood in the way of getting answers. It may not have been the way that things were done in Hinton Hollow but he had been away. He had witnessed a world where neighbours do not talk to one another. Where independent, family-run stores like RD’s were obsolete and in their place were chains of soulless companies with no personality, no individualism. Nobody knew your name or that you would love the plum crumble.

  They rented their houses. They wanted more than they had. They couldn’t settle. They moved around. But Pace was home now. And he had brought me with him.

  Jacob Brady looked beyond resuscitation but Pace had seen things. He had watched men with cuts across their throat refuse to die. He had seen women overpower men a hundred pounds heavier than they were because they refused to lie down and allow death to take them.

  It had changed him. That was part of the reason he had returned to Hinton Hollow. A small part of why he came home.

  And now this.

  Pace and I squeezed past the mother you are judging. She was no longer on his mind.

  ‘I’m Detective Sergeant Pace. Are you hurt in any way?’

  The boy shook his head.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Michael. Michael Brady.’

  ‘Okay, Michael. I know you say you haven’t been hurt but I’d just like to let the medic check you over while we talk. All right?’ He beckoned the female paramedic to join us.

  Michael dipped his head in a nod that was somehow sad and courageous at the same time.

  ‘Now, I need your help. Can you tell me what happened here today?’ Pace’s tone was friendly, non-threatening. The boy was doing him a big favour. He was being brave.

  ‘It all happened so fast. But I can try.’

  The sun, on day one, plummeted behind the houses the Bradys were heading towards before it happened. The shade hit the woods and the wind shook the trees. And the leaves sounded like they were laughing.

  FOR BALANCE

  I could see it.

  Too frightened to cry, Michael had slipped into a quiet state of disbelief.

  I could feel it.

  Telling himself that this wasn’t happening. That it wasn’t real. A game. Just one of their silly games. Michael had not been as successful as his mother at fooling himself.

  He had repeatedly pinched the skin on his left forearm with his right hand, starting lightly with his fingertips, eventually getting to a place where his nails were digging into his flesh like pincers and drawing blood. The paramedic spotted the wounds while she examined the boy who had lived to tell the tale.

  Part of it.

  He had merely been trying to wake himself up from the nightmare.

  ‘We had just finished school and Mum had picked us up. Like she always does. I couldn’t find one of my trainers so we were late getting out.’ He seemed too coherent for a seven-year-old who had undergone a stressful and shocking event. He seemed removed from it, somehow.

  SOMETHING ABOUT CHILDREN

  Children are brave.

  It comes from their innocence.

  Not knowing the horrors the world has in store for them means that they have less to fear.

  ADDENDUM

  Bravery can also be achieved through experiencing horror.

  ‘So there was nobody else in the park with you?’ the detective asked.

  ‘I don’t remember but I don’t think so. Everyone left before us. If I hadn’t lost my shoe…’

  ‘You’re not to blame for any of this, Michael. None of this is your fault.’ For the first time, Detective Sergeant Pace was forceful in his tone with the child, the way he had been with the boy’s mother. ‘What happened when you got to the park?’

  ‘We were just walking home like we always do. Jacob was holding Mum’s hand but I was in front of them. Then he came next to me because there was a dead beetle on the floor and it was massive.’ Michael stretched his thumb and forefinger apart to indicate the size. ‘We were looking at it. Then Mum called my name. I turned round. There was a man behind her and he shot a gun.’

  Michael looked over at his brother then and tears filled his eyes. He started to cough and they fell down his cheeks.

  ‘You’re doing really well, Michael,’ Pace reassured him.

  ‘Then the man just ran off through the woods and Jacob was lying on the floor. And Mum was really screaming a horrible scream.’ He took three con
secutive, deep inhalations trying bravely to get through his story, but it had brought too much back. He was no longer detached from his surroundings. Everything became loud. Light became unbearable. The paramedic gave Pace a look that suggested he should pull back a little; the boy was, understandably, not dealing with this.

  ‘Thanks, Michael. That’s enough for now. Are you okay to stand up? It might be an idea to take a seat in the back of the ambulance, eh?’

  ‘Is my mum going to be okay?’ he asked gallantly, with genuine concern. Pace nodded reassuringly, though he suspected otherwise.

  It’s the kids. I can’t help but like the kids. And there was something about the Hinton Hollow children – Michael Brady, Little Henry Wallace – they were so brave, so thoughtful. A pureness that not even I could corrupt. Nor would I want to.

  Good people make my job easier.

  The better people are, the less evil I have to be. I will always be there, a necessity, for balance, but with things the way they are, I have to be worse. People make me worse.

  The paramedic wrapped a blanket around Michael’s shoulders as he sat looking out of the ambulance’s rear doors. His younger brother had been covered over, his mother still refused to look at her living son, and the detective was completely still, strong-looking. He was surveying the scene, maybe looking for clues, but his eyes fixed on the wooded area that the attacker had run to after firing his gun. I made him do this. I stroked his paranoia just enough to let his focus wander to the trees.

  Michael stared at his mother, hoping that he would catch her eye at some point.

  What did that man say to you? he was asking.

  Why did you let him kill Jacob?

  When the dust settled and reality returned, there would be more questions for Michael Brady. He was the only person to have seen the killer’s face and lived.

  But, to the boy of seven, he had just looked like an ordinary man.

  YOU HAVE TO SLOW DOWN

  Mrs Wallace had been right.

  Something was coming.

  The effects of the events I had brought about travelled faster than a slanderous rumour across that town. Mrs Beaufort’s right shoulder rested on a white baby-grow, aged six to nine months.

  It needed a wash.

  Her eyes never closed. She was nowhere near ready to go but her thoughts were not with herself. They were not even contemplating the prospect of joining Mr Beaufort. She knew that she had one customer in her store. She knew the woman, Katy Childs; she had known her since birth. She knew her parents. She knew her mother, sweet but firm, and her father, more firm than sweet. Too firm.

  The Rock-a-Buy owner knew the hardships that Katy had endured, and emerged from them a stronger person, but she didn’t want her to have to suffer the anguish that would come with a closed-eyed Mrs Beaufort.

  So she fought.

  Mrs Beaufort battled against everything her body was telling her.

  The pain in your chest is severe.

  You can’t go on like this.

  You have to slow down.

  Her mind took over. It told her that she was Hinton Hollow. If she went, the town would be lost to the gloaming. She had to protect it. So she battled the cramps in her heart and she forced her eyes to remain open while she waited for an ambulance. She did it for herself. She did it for the new mother, panicking in the shop with her baby swaddled close to her breast. But mostly she did it for the town she loved, the place she had always called home.

  The shop-front window turned dark and Mrs Beaufort’s open eyes widened further. Katy saw fear.

  I thought the old lady saw me.

  ‘You hang on, Mrs Beaufort, I think that’s them.’

  The shadow cast across the front of Rock-a-Buy soon turned blue with the rotating lights of the paramedics’ vehicle. Mrs Beaufort allowed herself a split second of relaxation and closed her eyes gently while Katy peered helplessly out of the window, waiting for help to burst through the door.

  It arrived in the form of two men dressed in green overalls, their names Velcroed to their chests; one of the men was carrying a red box that he hoped he wouldn’t have to open. He hadn’t wanted to be responsible for bringing Mrs Beaufort back from death.

  He didn’t have to.

  The warmth of the room was sucked out of the open door.

  Something was there.

  * After Oz Tambor was taken.

  DAY TWO

  Where you will learn more about:

  A broken family

  A missing lover

  The local police department

  How Evil moves

  and a cat killer.

  THE WALLACE WOMAN

  ‘Mum, this is weird. It doesn’t feel right.’

  Mrs Wallace was waiting for the kettle to boil.

  ‘Mum. Mum. Mum, are you listening?’ Her eldest son was still in his pyjamas. He should have been at school but they were all closed in the local area that day on account of the Brady incident.

  Mrs Wallace poured the boiling water over her tea leaves.

  ‘I’m listening,’ she finally answered, bringing her cup to the dining table.

  ‘Henry could be anywhere. He’s too small. You should have sent me. It doesn’t make any sense. I’m worried.’

  She knew that look.

  ‘Don’t get upset. It’s going to be okay.’ She moved her body closer to his, put her hand on his back and rubbed to reassure him.

  To the majority of Hinton Hollow residents, Mrs Wallace was known as ‘The Wallace Woman’. Scorned by a husband who upped and left her to raise two kids, the rumour was that it had sent her mad. To anyone that took the time to speak with her, to listen to her, they were the fortunate few who knew that it was quite the opposite. The situation had focused her, made her more attune to her surroundings.

  Normal human insecurities would give me something to probe should I want to have an effect at some point, but she was as honest as a child.

  ‘But how can you be sure? How do you know?’

  ‘Because I feel it. Just as strongly as I feel that something is here right now. It’s all over the village. But we were prepared. And we are safe. And Henry will be safe, too. Okay?’

  He nodded, managing to hold back the tears and be brave like his little brother.

  The Wallace Woman did seem a little mad. I could understand why she was viewed that way in Hinton Hollow. But, to me, the most important thing was that everything she was telling her son was right.

  ‘Mum, this morning has felt so long without Henry here and not going to school.’

  ‘I know and I’m sorry, darling, but it’s going to be a very long week.’

  PIG/CAT

  The cat jumped up onto the kitchen counter and Darren saw a pig. Its tail in the air, content and purring, wanting food, I held the abattoir worker by the shoulders and I shook him.

  To that mallet-wielder, the rasping vibration of feline affection sounded like the squeal he heard most days when unloading the truck.

  Darren was making himself a sandwich. Cheese. There was ham in the fridge but he still couldn’t bring himself to eat it. He shredded some lettuce and squeezed mayonnaise over the top. The cat walked by and added a hair.

  To that skull-cracker, the graceful movement across the work surface of his only companion looked like the bucking of a cow, jumping towards the freedom of outdoor space or chasing a farmer as its calf is ripped away.

  Darren pulled the hair from the mayonnaise, wiped his fingers against the back pocket of his trousers and watched as his pet dropped to the floor and started to wind around his legs.

  Another nudge from me and the cat’s tight anus stared at his owner. Darren tasted salt. He flashed to the fury he’d felt two days before. The wet nose and whiskers beneath him appearing like a bleeding snout.

  I prodded him again.

  That flesh-boiler crouched and stroked along the back of his animal then picked it up. Unlike the pigs he electrocuted or the cows whose heads he would shoot a
bolt into, the domesticated animal he had in his arms had a name; they’d lived together for six years.

  And, somehow, that made it worse when he gripped the cat’s neck in one hand, held it down on the surface where he’d just made a sandwich, and stabbed through its abdomen repeatedly with the knife he’d used for butter.

  There’s a great deal of force required to pierce through flesh with a blunt knife. The kind that can only come with great anger, when a storm is brewing.

  AN OBSERVATION ABOUT PEOPLE AND DEATH

  The execution of an adult can, somehow, be understood and reasoned.

  The death of a child can be heartbreaking but rationalised.

  The massacre of livestock can be largely ignored.

  Yet, the killing of a pet — particularly a dog or a cat — is devastating. An unforgivable act.

  It is evil.

  I find this distinction between living things perplexing.

  Darren was getting worse. He was not acting like himself.

  Or, perhaps he was finally letting out the person that he had been holding down inside.

  That anus prodder.

  That pig kicker.

  That salt shover.

  That slaughterer.

  A LITTLE TIME

  Let’s talk about the Bradys, shall we?

  I wanted Faith Brady to die. If someone had to, I wish it had been her.

  Save the children. There’s more good there. And more good means the evil in the world can be less evil. I could rest a little.

  When I watched that man come out of the woods and push a gun into the back of her head, I wanted the bullet to exit through her face along with fragments of her skull and obliterated parts of her brain. That way, I would know that the world was not entirely doomed. My small story would have been a lot smaller. That’s the way I want it.