Sufferer's Song

by Savile, Steve

  He backed up three steps and then hurled himself shoulder first into the door. The impact forced the crack another twelve inches wider.

  “You had your chance, baby girl, now it is my turn!”

  He shouldered in through the gap he had made. The house smelled too damned clean, like aspic burning at his nostrils. The curtains made everything seem twice as dark as he remembered it. Darkness offered more places to hide. It didn’t matter to him, he wanted them to hide. He wanted to draw it out. To make it hurt the mind as much as the body. He pushed the settee back, jamming it up against the foot of the stairs. Kicking the lounge door open he reached inside and turned the light on. Nothing happened. “Nowhere to hide kiddies. Daddy’s going to find you, and when he does he’s gonna make it hurt. I promise you that. Daddy’s gonna make it hurt so much!”

  The pleasure centres in his brain soaked up the good feeling all of his shouting generated; an overload, almost, of pleasure. Images of good times raced through his mind, downed out by the shouting, arguing and fighting that had marred the last fifteen years. They all had voices, Kathy, Ellen, Sarah. They wouldn’t let him rest. They never left him alone. Always arguing, bickering. Making him angry, all the time making him so damn mad it hurt.

  Daniel punched the walls with the full force of his fists. “Where the hell are you?”

  He chased what he thought was a giggle into the kitchen. Laughing at him. One of the little bitches was laughing at him. He’d teach her. Just let him get his hands around her scrawny neck and he’d pluck every fucking hair from her happy giggling little body. See if she is laughing then, see if screaming makes her happy!

  The kitchen was empty. Really? He contradicted himself, pulling open a drawer full of cutlery. He emptied it onto the floor. Moonlight glinted off a huge variety of blades. Daniel crouched, taking time over his choice. He pulled a meat cleaver from the clatter of knives. He weighed it in his hand.

  He rifled other drawers, tipping them out onto the floor and kicking through the contents until he found the whetstone. The sounds of him sharpening the cleaver’s edge filled the whole house: schee-scraaaw, scheee-scaaaaaw. He pulled the cleaver blade in precise figure eights, before testing the edge on his thumb. It was sharp enough. The press of steel was cool against his thumb, the sting of it slicing through the pad of his thumb hurt less than a pin’s prick.

  Daniel stopped midway through a figure eight and looked up, deep into Kathleen’s eyes with an intensity of hatred that frightened him almost as badly as it did her.

  His voice came back to him. He was meant to be here. He had things to do here. She was the intruder. His face took on an expression of calm insanity. His grin twisted.

  She shuffled back a step. Daniel shook his head. He inspected the cutting edge of the cleaver. He tapped it against his bleeding thumb. He pushed himself to his feet. The kitchen was suddenly tiny, the space between them nothing. She wouldn’t make it out of the house unless he wanted her to.

  She was terrified. The fear came off her in waves. She took another step backwards, sweat tricking into her blinking eyes.

  Daniel laughed, a deep, belly sound. Kathleen was stuck in the sludge of slow motion. He could feel her mind calculating the risks.

  “Go for it,” he rasped.

  Kathleen bolted for the front door.

  He watched her fling the door open wide and charge out into the rain-filled blackness on the other side, making it as far as five again in that count of ten before giving chase.

  He caught a whiff of her in the air. This new attribute left him reeling. He turned, and turned, sniffing at the air. The bitch is trying to double back on me. One sound, just give me one sound. And there it was, the bolt of the garden gate sliding back.

  This was what he wanted, the exhilaration of the chase. He could hear her whimpering now, bleating like a little lamb. “You can’t run far, baby girl. You know that I’ll catch you. I promise you I will make it hurt.”

  The rain felt wonderful on his face. He barreled around the corner. Hit the gate at a run, one foot level with the latch as though he were trying to run straight over it. He used his momentum to carry him easily up the height of the gate, grasped the top and swung himself up and over. He dropped down to the ground as gracefully as a stalking cat. Gave up shouting. She couldn’t be far. “Where are you, Kathy?”

  The foliage made it hard to distinguish any definite lines. If she was smart she would stay under cover. He started walking toward the shadow of the weeping willow in the centre of the lawn.

  Kathleen came bolting out of the night like startled game, straight into the path of her hunter. Daniel caught hold of her, letting her beat at his face and chest while he pulled her tight. He could see the confusion in her eyes, the need to love and trust him, the fleeting belief that it was going to be all right, that he was simply going to kiss her and she was going to wake up from the nightmare.

  She was still locked in the embrace of that misconception when he pushed her back and took the cleaver to the side of her skull, slamming the blade into the bone, twisting it free and slamming it home again, hilt deep into her shoulder.

  It took him six swings to hack through her neck.

  Daniel jogged back around to the front of the house, Kathy’s head swinging loosely by the hair in his grip. He stood in the doorway, sniffing. Sniffing out flesh. The reek of blood was strong in the air. Too strong, overpowering his newfound talent.

  He ran straight up the stairs. Five doors faced him on the landing. They were all closed. He opened Ellen’s door, and stood in the doorway, sniffing. Nothing. He opened Sarah’s door, and likewise there was nothing. He ignored his own room and tried the bathroom door. It was locked.

  “Open up, angel,” he said, pressing his face up against the door. He pushed the lower half of the door with his knee and felt something bracing the door. “Let me in.”

  “Not by the hair on my chinny, chin, chin,” Daniel cackled. He stepped back and hurled himself at the door. Each time he hit it the flimsy wood bowed. Only the bracing effect of his daughter’s back stopped it from giving way completely, ripping out the latch and flying open.

  Daniel hit the door again. This time he met no resistance. The door burst open. He almost fell across the threshold but caught his balance. He stayed in the doorway and reached for the light cord, snapping it out of habit. His only reward was a click in the darkness. “You in the bath, darling? Come to daddy, I won’t hurt you. I promise.”

  Sarah, the eldest of his two girls, was huddled with her knees drawn up against her chest in the bathtub. Daniel kept the cleaver out of sight behind his back. “Come on, darling, come give daddy a hug. It’s all right.”

  She looked at him as though he were all of her worst nightmares made flesh and so horribly real.

  Daniel offered her his rictus smile and a hand out of the tub. She shook her head. He crouched down beside her. “Come on, darling. Daddy’s only doing what’s best. Come out of the bath. We’ve got to get you and Ellen out of here before something bad happens.”

  “What’s happening outside?” Sarah managed, her head still shaking. She stared at his offered hand as though it were a rattlesnake.

  “People are fighting,” he said, truthfully. “People are setting fire to some of the houses.”

  “Oh, daddy . . .”

  “I know, baby, I know. But you can’t hide from it in the bathtub. We’ve got to get out of here before someone sets fire to our house.”

  She took his hand, needing the support to get out of the bathtub. Daniel used it to pull her off balance. Sarah fell, tripping over the side of the tub. She screamed. Daniel cut it short with a powerful downward swing of the cleaver, driving it into the back of Sarah’s neck as she twisted to see his face.

  “Don’t make a sound, baby girl. They might hear us. Don’t make a sound.”

  * * * * *

  Ellen, hidden under the bed in her room, heard it all. She was too scared to move so much as a breath. She had been te
rrified, hearing him arrive screaming at her door, but that white-hot terror couldn’t last. Gradually it subsided to a low fever of fear that left her feeling as though she were in the first stages of flu.

  Ellen gripped her sister’s butterfly deodorant spray can to her chest, drawing some small comfort from the handy-sized can.

  “Where are you, angel? Come to daddy,” her father called from the landing.

  Ellen shuddered, clutched the metal canister.

  She had to bite her tongue. It was almost impossible not to think of him as her dad. It was impossible not to crawl out and surrender with a tight hug and an “I love you, daddy,” as though he had caught her out in a game of hide and seek.

  - 73 -

  Sam Ash had his own phobias. He had always hated the rain. Under normal circumstances he would never have ventured outside but these were not normal circumstances by any stretch of the imagination. He hadn’t had a choice about staying inside or going out, the world was falling down around his knees and Sam was trying to use the image of Trudi Packer’s hard-sweet face as a wil’o the wisp to bully him out of hiding. Self preservation had very different ideas about leaving the shadows. He had been caught out in the thick of things when Scott Jordan’s red Ford went up in flames, and for once in his life Sam ignored the panicked voice of self preservation and ran out into the nightmare. He kept his eyes on the street, expecting to see the rioters come screaming and charging into sight with their bricks and petrol bombs.

  Sam dashed out from his hiding place behind a hedge in Dipton Walk. Against every instinct, he stopped on the white line, his head turning left and right as he prayed he would make the right choice.

  Which way to go?

  He looked to the sky for inspiration – which was not as stupid as it might have been. Flames rose on two sides, back in the direction of the High Street and the way down into the estate and the railway embankment. Sam had a fifty-fifty chance of picking the wrong route and running into bricks and petrol bombs. He looked at the blood that was still bright on the white line of Dipton Walk.

  “Hey! Hey you!”

  His heart lurched. Time had run out on him, cheating him of his last gamble. He had prayed into a vacuum. Only it wasn’t a rioter come sniffing out blood. It was a man, well into his retirement, in blue striped pyjamas with an overcoat on over the top and a flat cap on his head. The old man waved a hand at Sam and shouted again.

  Sam made frantic gestures to try and tell the old man to keep his racket down but no matter what sign language he tried, the old man only shouted louder. Soon, the wrong ears were bound to hear him. Sam didn’t want to be stranded in no man’s land when they did.

  “Oh to hell with it,” he told himself, and ran toward the old fool with the big mouth, checking over his shoulder for the first telltale missile as he ran.

  And still the old fool just stood there waving his arms and shouting, “Hey! You!”

  It wasn’t until Sam was up next to him that Sam realized that the old man wasn’t shouting at him. He was shouting for anyone that might come. His eyes were glazed over with the cataracts of glaucoma. Blind, Sam realized, very nearly cannoning into the old man. His perspective lurched rapidly: what the hell is he doing out here alone?

  He clutched at ignorance, but knew instinctively that there was no simple answer as to why the old man was out there shouting. “Hey! You!” the old timer called out again. Sam laid a hand on his arm and said, “I’m here,” and started leading him out of the road.

  Now, out of the corner of his eye, Sam caught sight of a naked, blood smeared figure crouching by the roadside hedge. It was no one he recognized from the village.

  “Come on, granddad,” he said, and began pulling him into one of the many recessed doorways along the street. The creature – that was how he thought of it – had seen him and had crawled out from its sanctuary.

  Sam lost it.

  A flicker of fear crossed his face. Even though the old man was in no position to be affected one way or another, Sam forced himself to stand that bit straighter and keep his face and voice calm. The sounds of the riot were nearing, which suggested their observer had reported back and summoned reinforcements. The lunacy of the night scared the crap out of him. Same wasn’t going to let it show. He latched on to one thought: people are going to come looking for me to help them.

  “Back here, granddad, we’re going to get you the hell out of here. Think you can make it back to the main road?”

  “I may look like a cripple, sonny, but I ain’t.”

  Sam had to be patient with the slow pace the old man set. Keeping to the shadows they moved cautiously from tree to tree, trying to avoid making any sort of sound that would carry to the wrong ears. He didn’t think they would be heard, as long as they didn’t run out into plain sight and start hollering up a storm again.

  He needed time to think, and wanted to be out of the cold hard rain. Without taking to the hills, which was impossible in this weather, there was only one way out of Westbrooke and that meant risking the High Street and running out along the Spine Road. It wasn’t exactly sensible but neither was staying around with a war going on on all sides.

  The safest place had to be outside of town while he waited for the police to quell the continuing eruptions. And that meant the High Street whether he liked it or not. The decision gave him no comfort.

  The next moment, he felt an icy air against his face. He knew well enough the sour stench it carried. It was the smell of this nightmare – burning. At the first opportunity Sam left Dipton Walk, run-walking onto Juniper Close. The sight that greeted him left him sick with joy: people, normal people, no bricks or homemade bombs, milling dazedly in the street as lost the old man had been.

  Someone saw Sam. There was a scream then scared silence as they waited to see what latest trick the night had in store. Sam expected knives or clubs to suddenly materialize if he stepped closer, while the crowd – which wasn’t much of a crowd when he looked again, a dozen people, no more – weren’t sure what ghost was going to come back to fight them if they dared believe there was a way out of their nightmare.

  As it was, Sam took a second huge risk. He walked toward the crowd of people, one hand pulling the old man along and the other at his side, unsure whether to wave or hold it up to show he meant no harm. The air brought goose-pimples to his arms. Eleven people, he counted. That made thirteen of them. Sam decided then and there that he wasn’t a superstitious man.

  “Sam?”

  Sam turned to see who knew him – but in a village this size the answer was everyone. It was a small woman with distinctly oriental features. In her hand she held a breadknife. Her scrutiny of him was both lengthy and unapologetic. “I’m clean,” he said, holding out both hands now for inspection. It was a line he had seen time and again on TV shows and it seemed appropriate for the situation. She seemed to understand well enough what he meant.

  “What are we going to do?” Someone asked, their voice full of self-pity.

  “I’m not telling you to come with me, mate. What I am saying is that the smart people will be the ones who get out of this place and leave it to the professionals to sort the shit out. I’m getting out of here and anyone who wants to follow is welcome to follow but no one is being forced.”

  “Easy as pie,” the dissenter said mockingly.

  The old man surprised Sam by saying, “Fine, go your own way, lad. It’s your funeral, not his, not mine, and not anyone else who comes with us.”

  The dissenter looked across at Sam, his face suddenly haggard. The life had gone from his eyes. Sam saw that look, recognized it and shook his head. “I don’t have the answers, I’m sorry. You’ve got to make up your own mind.”

  “Listen to me,” the dissenter said, pushing forward. “They’re killing people back there. Why should they let us walk out? Because you say so, Sam? Your uniform doesn’t mean crap anymore.”

  Sirens began cutting through the noise in the street.

  Suddenly anothe
r explosion, a long slim blue flame hissed out halfway across the street – their street – as a gas pipe blew out into a dragon’s tongue of fire. The explosion sent debris raining into the road. As Sam turned his head looking for the perpetrator, the dissenter said, “Fuck it, let’s just get out of here and argue about it later.”

  It felt strange watching the fire from a safe distance, but who could say just how long safe was going to remain that way? Not Sam, not the dissenter in the crowd, not the old man, none of them.

  These people were putting their trust in him. He was responsible for them now. He couldn’t pretend to be delighted with the arrangement. Sam shook his head wildly. What the hell am I doing here?

  “Come on, and keep the noise down. We don’t need the wrong people hearing.”

  They came to the junction with the High Street, out of the centre of the village itself, close in fact to where the High Street became the Spine Road. Sam looked east, back toward the village where so many houses wore the rainbow halo of fire. He turned his back on it.

  The night chill had deepened during the time it had taken to come this far. The rain was no less insistent.

  It was impossible to read the geography of the riot from this distance. He had to content himself with the knowledge that the Kid Pack weren’t streaming out of the rain on his heels. He couldn’t see a soul.

  “It’s okay folks, just around the corner and we hit the Spine Road, then the motorway, and we’re out of here.”