Marion felt water trickle down her thighs.
The policeman took her in his arms to stop her falling to the floor, and she wasn’t dealing with it anymore. He touched her and her mind broke. Snapped. A bough, broken in the face of the storm.
Marion wasn’t dealing with it at all.
*
Chapter Thirty-Three
He was half blind in the pounding rain, but John could see well enough to know the kid leaning over him was the same one who’d hit him with a bat and broke his ribs. His chest was on fire. His face was numb, but it was the kind of numb you knew was masking something else. Agony washed over him while his arms weakened, the rain and the cold, the pain and the terror, all of it taking his strength from him. But he held on. He squeezed as hard as he could.
Then someone kicked him hard in his foot, and he passed out for a second.
When he came around, there was a girl leaning over him. Concerned. Definitely not trying to kill him.
The scene played back in his head. He remembered crashing into a lake—a fucking lake in the middle of the road? Then the boy with the bat …
“Where’s the kid gone?”
“I’m here,” said a voice from behind the girl.
Shit.
John tried to stand, but he was faint and weak. God, he felt weak.
“Take it easy. I don’t want a fight.”
It wasn’t the words that stopped John trying to get up. It was the tone of the boy’s voice. He sounded even more tired than he felt himself. The boy sounded like he was ready to give in. Just roll over and die.
John knew that voice well. He heard it from himself sometimes, when despair was heavy on him and he thought he couldn’t go on.
Even though the boy had tried to kill him, John’s heart went out to him.
“What do you want?”
The girl backed away to stand beside the boy. John was in a compromising position. He was on the floor; the kid was standing. If the kid wanted to try kicking him again, he’d have a fairly good head start before John could do anything about it. But even in the dim glow of the rain, John could make out the resigned slump to the boy’s shoulders. He saw the girl glance at him, looking to him to see what was going to happen next. John, too, realised it was down to the kid. He wasn’t in any kind of shape to be doing anything.
“I just fucking saved your life.”
“Smiley, take it easy.”
John saw the girl was shivering. Her whole body was shuddering. She needed to get out of the rain.
“What happened to you two?”
The boy didn’t look like he was going to answer, but the girl took a tentative step forward. She looked familiar. Then John remembered who she was.
“Shit. You’re the girl from earlier … the girl…”
“Being raped,” he nearly said … but bit his tongue.
She nodded, like he’d continued the sentence.
“Smiley saved me.” She looked at the boy. Warmth in the look.
So the boy’s name was Smiley. John didn’t think for a minute it was his real name, but it was as good a name as any.
“What’s your name?”
“Mandy.”
“I’m John.”
“You OK? Did you break something?”
John wanted to say, “No, Smiley did,” but it was flippant, and it wouldn’t help any of them.
“I think I broke my ribs in the car. I can manage, though.” He could see these kids had been through something tonight. He’d bet his life on it.
Shit, he might have to.
But he was the adult. They were just kids. He had to take charge.
He bit down hard and pushed himself to his feet. The left one was agony, but he didn’t want to cry out. He could taste blood in his mouth, at the back of his nose. He touched his face and winced. Thought about shouting out, but he wouldn’t do it, couldn’t let himself be weak now. It wasn’t just for himself he had to be strong. He had to be strong for these two kids, right here and now.
And he had to get to Mr. Hill’s house. He could already see he wouldn’t be driving there.
“You got me out of the car?” he asked, addressing Smiley.
Smiley nodded. He was still wary. Like he wanted to get away, but wanted help too. John was willing to bet he’d seen some things tonight. A policeman. Maybe a whole heap of skeletons washed clean in the rain.
It didn’t matter, though. The skeletons … all the dead … John had a job to do. That was what being an adult was about. Doing things you knew you had to do, even when you didn’t want to.
He looked around for the box. It wasn’t there.
“Oh fuck.”
“What?”
“Where’s the box?”
“What?”
“There was a box. In my car.”
“Well, I didn’t fucking steal it.”
“I didn’t say you did.” John took a breath and started again. “I need that box. There’s been some weird shit happening tonight …”
“Weird?” said Mandy with a hungry look. Hungry for someone to shine some light on whatever was going on. “We’ve seen …”
“Later,” said John, cutting her off. “I want to know what happened to you. I do. But right now, if the box in my car gets wet …”
“Why? Is it valuable?”
John thought about it. “No. Maybe. It’s not valuable to me. It’s dangerous, though.”
He turned and looked at his car. It was easy to see. The lights were still on, under the water. He could see …
“Oh, oh … Is that a dead person?”
“Part of one.”
“You swam through that?”
Smiley nodded. John’s opinion of him was changing all the time. But in the meantime, the rain was pounding down, and the floodwater was rising by the minute. The box was on the passenger seat, surrounded by water.
He didn’t have time to find out what the kids knew. If he didn’t get the box, it might all be for nothing anyway.
John plunged into the water. His feet were instantly numb, and in a way, it was a relief.
“He’s fucking nuts,” he heard Smiley say.
“Do you think he knows there’s sewage in there?”
“No. Fuck him. A thank you wouldn’t have hurt.”
“You hit him with a baseball bat.”
“Yeah, OK.” Smiley shrugged. “We’re even.”
John turned slightly, thought about replying, but the plastic sack the box was in wasn’t waterproof.
What would happen if the floodwater hit it? If it just floated into the lake, the river, whatever this was … sank …
He ignored the girl and the boy watching him from the road and splashed deeper into the water.
*
Chapter Thirty-Four
The water hit him from above and below. It splashed down and up, and the sound was constant, blanking out everything but the steady thump of the body in the water bashing against his car like it was being bobbed in the swell of the sea. John pushed the corpse aside and climbed onto the bonnet.
The foot well was full of water. The windscreen was shattered. The black bag was right there on the passenger seat. The floodwater hadn’t reached it. The rain had, though. It was pounding through the windscreen and splashing against the plastic. John froze when he saw how much water was on the bag. It was well wrapped, but carrying it through the rain and the pulsing, pushing water around his waist would be like carrying a bomb. One slip and the box would go underwater. He didn’t think any amount of wrapping would keep it dry then.
He bent from his perch on the bonnet and took bag and box out. He swivelled, cargo held against his chest. It was just a matter of time before the water hit the box. There wasn’t much he could do either way, so he slid from the car back into the water.
He was dimly aware of the shapes of the two kids at the edge of the water. They were probably too old to be called children. They certainly weren’t old enough to deal with whatever was happeni
ng to his town. But then, who the hell was?
They could have run, but they stayed. If they’d run, John wouldn’t have had to worry about them. But there they were.
He drove his legs through the fetid water, onward, toward them.
They didn’t run, and now they were his responsibility.
He really didn’t want to fall down. Anything could lurk under the water.
A broken manhole. The hands of the dead. Skeletal, stripped of flesh, rising up his calves, grabbing his jeans, driving their fingers into his flesh.
A line from It floated into his mind. ‘We all float down here.’
He wished he didn’t read quite so much.
“Stop freaking yourself out, John.”
He laughed.
“Stop talking to yourself, John.”
He stopped talking to himself. Not because he was worried about going mad. He thought he might already be well on the way to insanity.
No, he was more worried about someone answering him back. A gurgling drowned voice. Bubbling up from under the thick black water.
Then something grabbed his ankle and he screamed, a high-pitched, panicked scream. He flailed in the water, desperately trying to get away.
“You all right?”
“Something’s in the water!”
“Then get out of the fucking water!”
The kid, Smiley. The simplicity of the statement focused John. He drove on, pushing great waves of water from his thighs, then his shins, until finally he was on the road.
It was only when he was out of the freezing water that he remembered his feet. They were so numb they didn’t hurt at all. His feet were retaining the option to begin hurting like fuck at any minute.
But while they didn’t hurt, he could walk. And there was a big hill right there, and no other way to get up it.
He put one foot in front of the other.
“Coming?” he said to the two kids.
They fell into step beside him. Smiley was holding Mandy’s hand, but John didn’t think Smiley knew anything about it.
“Where you going?”
“Up the hill. It might sound like a load of crap, but this all started this morning. An old guy I knew died and left me this box. He lived up the hill.”
John saw them exchange a glance.
“What?”
“Oak Drive?”
John stopped.
“OK. Now I’m freaked out.”
“You weren’t before?” said Smiley. John saw that the kid could still smile. He thought that was good. He looked again. Looked properly.
He wasn’t really a kid. He had to stop thinking that right now. He was young, sure, but he was on the cusp of manhood. And he was with John. John wasn’t alone anymore. He didn’t question it. It wasn’t a matter of thinking he had to look after these two kids … people … it was just as simple as finding yourself walking a lonely road you didn’t want to walk and meeting a traveler going the same way.
If Smiley could still smile with all this going on, John told himself, it might be better to start thinking of him as a man. That’s what a man is, right, John? Someone who deals with what has to be dealt with. It’s got nothing to do with age.
“I’ve been freaked out all day, Smiley. Totally freaked. Now, if you say a number and it’s the number I’ve got in my head, I … shit … Derren Brown’s got nothing on what’s been going on today.”
“How about nine?” said Smiley, watching John.
John’s heart was beating like mad. His feet were starting to nag. If he didn’t get in the warm and sort himself out properly, he’d never finish this.
“I think we better talk,” said John.
Suddenly, the night turned white as lightning flashed. Thunder boomed overhead. John ducked.
“And walk faster,” he said.
The rain turned to hail. Lightning flashed down to their right, hitting a house. The roof exploded, throwing tiles high into the air.
John didn’t think he had a run left in him, but he found he could run pretty fast after all.
*
Chapter Thirty-Five
A woman Mabel Oldham’s age needed her sleep. Need or want, it didn’t matter much. She knew she wasn’t going to get any. First it had been the thunder that kept her awake. Pounding right over her head. It sounded like the blitz. Then the flashing lightning like daylight in her bedroom every ten minutes and, through it all, rain she could hear hammering away on the windows and even through the bloody roof.
When the power went out, she gave up altogether. She hadn’t been able to sleep in total darkness for eighty-two years, and she wasn’t about to sleep with a candle on. She hadn’t lost her marbles. Not like young David Hill. She remembered him when she got up. She didn’t think of him again until five a.m. precisely.
Mabel kept a tidy house. She could be totally sure she wouldn’t trip over anything lying around, even with the house in darkness. But she didn’t take any chances. She shuffled carefully through the dark, found a candle, lit a candle. She placed the candle in a little Wee Willy Winky holder, which she carried with her as she wandered through to the toilet and the kitchen and the living room, where she lit all of the big fat candles she used as ornaments.
The light was nice. A romantic light.
When she’d laid and lit a fire, she pulled back the curtains in the front room, tucked the net curtains up, and sat down in her armchair to watch the rain.
She loved a good storm. It wasn’t the worst storm she’d ever seen, but it was certainly up there.
There was a fair chill in the air, which the crackling fire was chasing away. She could smell the damp and, underneath the damp, a peculiar smell she couldn’t quite place. Probably something in the rain. She remembered seeing a news item about a smell coming over from the continent and hitting the Suffolk and Norfolk coasts. Maybe somewhere in France there was a chemical leak and the nastiness had been sucked into the air.
Mabel sniffed. That would be just like the French. Polluting the rain.
The lightning flashed, and thunder boomed right over her head.
“I hope the bloody house doesn’t wash away,” she said.
She didn’t have anyone to talk to. Sometimes it could get lonely, living on your own. There were the girls at bingo, but she didn’t have them over to sleep. The loneliest time was always in the deep night. Sleep courted the young and shunned the old.
“That old Sandman likes them young,” she said. Nodded to herself. Sighed.
A cup of tea. That’s the trick. A cup of tea and maybe a sneaky piece of cake. If she wanted to eat cake at … bloody hell!
She checked the clock and saw she’d spent three hours sitting in her armchair. She must have fallen asleep.
A fine way to go out. Dozing off with a bunch of candles burning.
“Daft bitch,” she told herself. She got out of the chair and plodded into the kitchen, where she flicked the switch on the kettle. The candle was fine. It was only halfway down. The wax was running down the side of the candle, and it was burning unevenly. It was one of those trendy candles, square and thoroughly impractical. Her daughter-in-law had bought it for her. Uppity cow thought her shit didn’t stink, but Mabel did love her son more than she didn’t her daughter-in-law, so she put the damn candle on the kitchen table.
The kettle didn’t do much.
“Power’s out, Mabel.”
Losing it.
The candles checked, cake sliced, biscuits placed on one side of the plate with a handful of Roses left over since her birthday, she sat down to watch the storm again. It raged, unabated.
The light from the candles and the fire in the living room was dim, but enough to see her reflection in the spotless glass of her windows. The road outside was awash. No doubt the bottom of the hill would be flooded again. Those poor people. Their houses had been flooded twice in the last ten years.
They’d put it down to global warming, no doubt. She thought it was probably just the builder’s fault
for putting houses in a big dip at the bottom of a hill. Should have more bloody sense.
She polished off the Battenburg and was onto the biscuits when a big bear of a man with two scrawny kids in tow ran past her front window.
‘What the …?’
The man had looked like John March. It probably wasn’t.
But then who else did she know in town that looked like one of them grizzling bears?
“What in the name of good Christ is John March doing running around at this time in the morning?”
David’s voice replayed itself in her head.
Something about seeing John. Now, what was it he said?
“‘Would you give this to John when you see him?’ That’s what he said. Sure as day.”
Give him what, now?
A letter. He’d given her a letter. He’d been acting like an old fool, and he’d given her a letter to give to John from the bookshop. But he hadn’t meant at—she looked at the clock—five in the morning. Of course he hadn’t.
She tried to remember the conversation with David that morning.
“Would you give this to John when you see him? But he asked me something else too. Come on, girl … what was it?”
She screwed her eyes shut, thinking. Then she let out a little whoop.
“What time I get up!” She clapped her hands, mildly delighted that her mind was still as sharp as it ever was.
“Eighty-two and five o’clock in the morning, thank you very much,” she said to herself.
Then she frowned. Remembered David telling her about the rain.
“Only one kind of rain, I said, and he said … Now what did he say? ‘This ain’t that kind of rain’, or as close as it doesn’t matter.”
She picked up a biscuit and gnawed on it. David had never been strange before. He was a perfect gentleman. If he’d asked her, she wouldn’t have courted him, but then that wasn’t because he wasn’t a gentleman. She just liked her peace and quiet. She’d had enough years tidying up after Mr. Oldham, God rest him.
Funny that he’d ask her what time she got up and John March would steam past at exactly five o’clock.
RAIN/Damned to Cold Fire (Two Supernatural Horror Novels): A RED LINE Horror Double: Supernatural Page 13
