“Now. A favour, yes?”
He took a bag from his pocket and spilled some pills onto the floor.
“Pills, boys and girls. My end of the bargain. Little blue pills. Make you happy, then make you sad. But happy first. That’s good, isn’t it? You may speak, Smiley.”
“What do you want?”
“Ah, a straightforward boy. A straightforward boy whose daddy likes to play with him, no?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Silence!”
Smiley’s teeth began to grind again, and tears squeezed from his eyes.
“You watch Greg here stick his noodle in Mandy slut’s mouth and all you can think about is your father, no?” He laughed. It wasn’t a wet sound. Smiley had been wrong. It was soaking. It was primal, water under pressure. The bottom of the sea, where no one had ever been.
“Anyway, enough. Eh? Here, boys and girls. Take your medicine.”
They each reached out and took a pill. Smiley reached down from his bike, picked it up. Couldn’t stop himself from putting it in his mouth. His teeth ground it to dust.
“There. All better soon. Now, to the crux, boys and sluts. There’s a man, in this very town. He likes young boys. You know about that, don’t you, Smiley? You haven’t got the balls to do for your daddy, but you can do this one. A paedophile, eh? Dirty fuckers, eh? Eh, Smiley?”
“Dirty fuckers,” said Smiley, and felt his head go up, down.
“Good boy. He lives above a shop in town. A bookshop. His name is John. Consider the pills an advance payment. I think you’ll have a ride tonight. Now, now, Mandy. Not yet. Not that kind of ride.”
Mandy’s head was rubbing back and forth against the front of Greg’s jeans.
Her tears had soaked his jeans.
“There. Good. We understand each other. You sort out my little problem, you’ll make a friend. Get it?” He looked around. They all nodded.
“I think it’s called ‘coming up.’ You’ll be coming up soon. Not like Greg, here, eh? Greg?”
Greg blushed bright red.
“Good good.”
The policeman pushed himself to his feet and turned and was out of the room in one smooth movement. The pool of water he had left behind flowed across the concrete after him.
*
Chapter Thirteen
The ambulance crew took Mrs. Reed’s body with them. The police didn’t turn out. There was nothing suspicious about an old lady with advanced Alzheimer’s dying in a care home. It happened every day, right across the country.
“What about the water?”
“Water, love?”
That had been it. The extent of the ambulance crew’s curiosity. The doctor came out. Signed it off. Like a chit or a time sheet.
Jane sat in the small staff room at the back of the building, where regulations and laws said you weren’t to smoke, but nobody gave a damn. The ash on her cigarette was long and drooping. Marion, her colleague and friend, put an ashtray underneath the ash and tapped the cigarette with the edge. The ash fell onto a stack of cigarette butts.
“Jane, honey. Come on. Let me give you a lift home.”
The candles flickered as the door opened and Wendy came in for the evening shift. The other girls were all late. Probably the rain.
The emergency lights were on in the hall, casting a green glow over everything. There were no emergency lights in the smoking room. The smoking room was the place they went after an emergency. It didn’t even have paint on the walls. Just plaster and old chairs that dead people had left behind.
“How you doing, sweety?” said Wendy.
Jane shrugged.
“You should get home. Put your feet up. Take a day off.”
“Nobody else made it in tonight?” asked Jane.
“No. Just me and Margaret. We’ll manage for a bit. Marion’s staying.”
“I should stay …”
“No,” said Wendy. “You should get home.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling her,” said Marion.
“I’m OK. I’ll go in a bit. Just let me finish this.”
“Jane … you’ve been saying that for nearly a whole pack of cigarettes.”
“I know. I promise. After this.”
“It’s always rotten, isn’t it?” said Wendy, taking a seat and getting her cigarettes out of her apron pocket.
“Always is. She …”
“You don’t have to talk about it. Not if you don’t want to.”
“No, I just can’t explain it. I swear I saw her bring up water. She was saying something about the rain. Then she just died. I swear. It was weird. I mean really weird. It’s not her dying. I’ve seen people die before.”
“It doesn’t get any easier.”
“No, but it wasn’t the dying. It was the way. It was like …”
“Yes?”
“I don’t know, Marion. I just don’t know. I should just get home.”
“You want a lift? Seriously. Margaret won’t mind. She’ll cover for me.”
“No, thanks. I’ll be all right. Anyway, it’ll be a pain in the bum getting back in the morning.”
“I’ll bring you in tomorrow too, then.”
Jane smiled. “No, really. I can drive. It’s not like I’m drunk. Just a bit shook up.”
She pushed herself up, stretched her back. “I’ll see you both tomorrow.”
“Take it easy tonight, OK?”
“I will. Bath and bed, I think.”
“Be careful. It’s chucking it down. I heard on the radio town’s flooded too.”
“I’ll go around. Night, girls,” said Jane. She picked up her cigarettes from the stained and chipped table.
“Night, sweety.”
The door closed slowly behind her on its pneumatic arm. It had been quiet in the windowless smoking room, but she understood why town was flooded as soon as she stepped into the hall. Windows ran along the hall, looking out on the garden. The rain was hammering into them with such force she was surprised the glass didn’t break.
She took her coat from her locker and put the small padlock back. Things had a way of going missing in a care home. She didn’t have anything she couldn’t live without, but after a spate of thefts from the residents last year, all the girls had taken to padlocking their lockers.
The kitchen was empty. The hallway was quiet. None of the usual nighttime sounds of a care home: distant grumbling, the swish of cotton as the carers walked swiftly from one job to the next, beeping alarms. Evening shift was easier, night shift easier still, but the residents didn’t always keep regular hours.
She turned the corner to the front foyer. The front door was wide open. The wind howled, and rain came in on a slant, driven by fierce gusts. The lights were out on the street too, but there was a hint of light, like faint moonlight, reflected in the rain.
Just for a second, Jane lost herself in it. It was beautiful, in a way. The power of it, the sheer ferocity of the storm. But some idiot had left the door open, and that overrode everything else.
“For God’s sake,” she said. One of the evening shift coming on at last, probably in a rush. She was stomping across the foyer to the door when she saw a movement across the hall. She turned, quickly, and caught a glimpse of a shadow behind the stairwell door.
“Hey!” she called. The girls knew better than to leave the front door open. Whoever it was had left the stairwell door ajar too.
She swung the door to the stairs open but didn’t move any farther. A man was going through the door to the top floor.
“Hey,” she said, but the rest of her words died in her throat. Hey what? No visitors came in unannounced in the evening. They rang the bell. Visiting was from six ‘til eight, and the girls answered the door.
Someone had broken in.
She looked at her watch. Shit. It was visiting hours.
A small laugh popped out. No big deal. She checked the visitor’s log.
No one had signed in.
&nb
sp; No one had rung.
Then it hit her. She’d been in the smoking room for over two hours. Dinner time had come and gone. The cooks had gone home. The evening shift, apart from Wendy and Margaret, hadn’t turned up.
And somebody had gone upstairs without signing the log book, but they’d rung, and no one heard it because they’d all been smoking when there should have been someone about to answer the door. The visitor had let themselves in.
OK.
It didn’t mean anything.
But …
She could go and tell Marion and Wendy someone was in, or she could just go and find out who it was and tell them to sign the God damn book.
She took the stairs and stepped onto the landing, closing the door behind her.
The carpet was spongy and wet in places, and in the emergency lights, she could make out footprints, slightly darker patches on the red carpet. The carpet was grey in the light. The footprints black.
“Hello?”
A moan came from the room down the hall. She walked quickly, following the sound, and then pulled up sharply at the end of the hall. The door to Mrs. March’s room was closed. The moaning was coming from within.
The residents’ doors were never closed. Mr. March, come back for the evening visit?
Marion came up the hall behind her.
The moaning was quicker. More urgent.
“What’s going on?” asked Marion.
“What are you doing here?”
“I followed you. You left the front door wide open. The alarm kicked in. Are you all right?”
“Someone’s in there.”
“Probably Mr. March.”
“Why is the door closed?”
Marion cocked her ear at the groaning coming from the room. “Sounds like they’re going at it.”
“Marion!”
“Come on, I’m joking. Just open the door.”
“What if they’re …?”
Marion sighed. “Don’t be daft,” she said and pushed the door open.
“Mr. March?” she said as she went through the door.
Mrs. March was on the bed. She was writhing, her legs scissoring underneath the covers. There was no one else in the room.
Jane ran to Mrs. March’s side, thinking she was having another convulsion until she realised why she was writhing. Her lips were pinched together, and her breath was coming in small gasps. Her hand worked furiously under the covers. She was pinching her left nipple through her nightgown.
She had no idea what to do. She’d seen old men with erections in the home, but never a woman … doing … what Mrs. March was doing.
“Where is he?” said Marion.
“I don’t know,” said Jane. She couldn’t take her eyes off the woman in the bed. Mrs. March was completely unaware there was anyone else in the room. Her eyes squinted shut in concentration.
There was a smell in the room. A cloying, intangible smell. It took a while to recognise it, because Jane wasn’t expecting it.
It was come. A man’s come.
Marion didn’t say anything. Jane didn’t say anything.
They both stood there, not saying anything, with nowhere to look but at the woman on the bed. She was groaning with pleasure, but there was an urgent feel to it, a hint of desperation in there too. Jane couldn’t take it anymore. It was obscene.
“Enough,” she said. “Enough.”
She sat on the bed and took Mrs. March’s hand away from her nipple, took the other hand out of her diapers. Mrs. March fought her, her eyes still tight shut, her breath stuttering, like she was about to have an orgasm.
“Marion, God damn it! Don’t just stand there.”
Marion coughed. “Shit. Sorry.”
Together they forced Mrs. March’s hand away. She screamed, and her scream was filled with pure, cold fury.
There was another sound underneath the scream. A deep echo, rumbling in the background. The woman on the bed bucked against Marion and Jane, trying to throw them off. Water suddenly drenched the bed, covering them all. It stank of rot and bile and come. Jane leaped up and screamed herself, brushing at the water, trying to get it off. The water was black. It flowed up, across her body, into her nose, into her eyes, blinding her.
She was crying out, holding her neck. Gurgling like she was drowning. Then it was gone and she could breathe. She pulled in great gasps of air, and then the tears came. Small terrified sobs, harsh through her raw throat.
The water turned to mist, but thick. More like oil than water. A viscous fluid with weight and texture.
And that awful, awful taste.
Jane heaved once, and more of the fluid splashed to the carpet. Mrs. March cried out over and over, gasping like she’d just had the orgasm of her life. Then the water swirled up into the air, a tornado, turned solid and smashed out through the window, into the night and the rain.
Marion ran to the head of the bed and thumped the alarm. She didn’t know why, but she knew for sure that she didn’t know what the hell was happening, and she knew for damn sure it wasn’t up to her and Jane to deal with it.
*
Chapter Fourteen
There was no water on the carpet. There was no water on the ceiling. John stood under the spot that should have been leaking, but it wasn’t leaking. He stood there for maybe five minutes, just staring at the ceiling. He looked down again, and this time he saw a large wet patch under him.
“What the hell?”
No. Not a leak.
“You really are going mad, John.”
Not a leak. Just the puddle of water he’d brought in with him. He was standing around, dripping water in his own shop.
On any other day, it might have been funny.
He double checked the front door. He took the two notes he kept in the till out and put them under the counter, took the key from the till, which he’d neglected to do earlier, then checked his phone for messages. The red light was glowing steadily, so he locked the office door—the computer was probably the only thing thieves would bother stealing—then he went up the back stairs to his home.
The door at the bottom of the stairs didn’t lock, but he had paid a carpenter to come in and build him a real front door, for added security, at the top of the stairs between the shop and the small apartment above it where he lived. He put the keys in the door, let himself in, then locked it again and put the chain across.
He put the lockbox he’d carried for the last few hours on the armchair before making a cup of tea.
His apartment was fairly Spartan, with just a couch, a small coffee table, which doubled as his dining table, and an old, probably dangerous, gas fire. He had a standing lamp in the corner, which he preferred to read by. The overhead lights were too bright. If he’d had any aptitude for DIY, he would have put in dimmer switches. He wouldn’t have put in shelves. It would have been pretty pointless when he lived above a bookshop full of them. Even so, he had a small stack of his current books in the bedroom, and a smaller pile of books he was halfway through and meant to go back to when the mood took him.
The toilet was purely functional. He wasn’t completely inept as a housekeeper. It was clean, but by no means spotless.
The only other rooms, a kitchenette and the bedroom, were just as functional as the living room.
It was the home of a man with nothing to live for. A man marking time.
When the kettle boiled, John poured the water over his tea bag, added two sugars and some milk, took a bottle of Teacher’s from the cupboard and poured in a hefty helping of whiskey.
Only then did he go into the bedroom and change into some dry clothes. He came back into the front room wearing a pair of tattered old jeans that had a hole in the seat, but were so thin they were like wearing air. He pulled on a knitted cotton jumper as he walked. It was a present from Karen. It, too, had seen better days.
The box on his armchair was waiting for him. He took his tea from the kitchen and put it on the table beside him. Only then did he swap places with
the box, taking it onto his lap.
Blood and bone and hair and tooth.
Three out of four.
He didn’t have the slightest idea what he’d find when he went to Mr. Hill’s house, but he was dreading it. The morbid curios the box held were enough to turn the stomach. Was there blood at Mr. Hill’s house? Was the old man crazy? Had he been crazy all the time he’d been coming to the shop?
He must have been at least some way crazy, thought John. Making a will out to someone he’d never met, in the hope … of what? Finding the right man at the right time?
There was just no way around it. Somehow Mr. Hill had known that John March, not just any John March, which was a small enough chance as it was, but the John March that had been born on his own birthday, him, this him, would one day buy a bookshop in his town and …
It wasn’t chance. That could be discounted. Discounted completely. It was something else.
John didn’t have the slightest idea what it was. All he knew was that he didn’t like it.
He sat there for a long time, listening to the thunder and the lashing rain. He couldn’t remember a storm like it. Rain like a monsoon in Vietnam, a trip when he’d been at university. A monsoon came close. But this was something else. It couldn’t last much longer. It couldn’t. A storm like this, it blew over. Got tired.
It didn’t sound to John like it was tired, though. It sounded like it was warming up.
As if to prove a point, the sky turned a brilliant white, and thunder boomed so close the windowpanes rattled.
It made him jump a little, which made him laugh.
The laugh let him move. Set him going again. Like a wind-up clock you tap to remind it what to do.
With a sigh and a shake of his head, he took the plastic bag from the box, inserted the key into the lock and removed each item, placing them on the coffee table.
Looked. Really looked.
Nothing.
He picked up the pendant first, as it was the least grotesque. He turned it around and around between his fingers. Nothing to distinguish it. No hallmark, even, but it was obviously gold. It had the weight, and it had some shallow scratches on it, like an old piece of gold might.
RAIN/Damned to Cold Fire (Two Supernatural Horror Novels): A RED LINE Horror Double: Supernatural Page 5
