She thought back to David that morning. How he’d looked at her. How … strange he’d been talking.
“Not strange. Plain old-fashioned weird.”
A chill ran down her spine.
Well, she couldn’t just chase after him and give him the letter. She didn’t know where he was going. When she got to his shop was soon enough. She’d buy a book or two, give him the letter, just like she said she would.
Why the hell couldn’t David give him a letter? Now she thought of the question, it seemed obvious. She should have asked David when he’d given it to her. She’d have his bloody ears if he was playing some kind of trick on her.
She harrumphed and had just sat back to finish her treats when the doorbell rang.
*
Chapter Thirty-Six
The candle in her hand flickered in the draft from the door. Either that or Mabel was shaking. She wasn’t shaking, though, because it was just an envelope. On her doormat. The inside doormat. There wasn’t anybody outside the door, because the top half of the door was frosted glass, and she would be able to see if someone were standing there.
The envelope was perfectly straight on her doormat. A rectangle within a rectangle. It was a standard-sized envelope. White with small writing on the front.
She couldn’t read the envelope while she was standing up. She didn’t want to bend down to read the writing.
A long time ago, when she’d been just a girl, she’d had a strange feeling. A feeling that something terrible was going to happen. She remembered it, even more than seventy years later. Just a girl with no fears, she’d been terrified that day. Shaking, she’d told her mother she thought something bad was going to happen to Daddy.
“Don’t be daft, love,” her mother had said.
But her daddy hadn’t come home. He hadn’t come home for three weeks. They’d found her father dead in a pond.
This was the same feeling. Shivery. Cold. Her hands were clammy.
She looked at the scuffed old unit in the hallway where she kept her keys and shopping lists and her change. The drawers were all shut. She always shut the drawers. She remembered shutting the drawer when she put David’s letter to John March in there.
With a trembling hand, she pulled the drawer open. The letter would be on top of all her bills and tattered old lists.
It wasn’t there. She pulled out all the letters. There were no envelopes in there. Of course there weren’t. Because somehow it had got out of the drawer, climbed out on its own, rang her doorbell and then posted itself through her letterbox.
Mabel laughed a dry old cackle. She imagined the letter growing little feet and running around, lying down on her doormat, sneaking a peek at her to make sure she was coming.
She wanted to tell herself that there was a perfectly reasonable explanation, but she couldn’t find her voice.
She reached down and read the scrawling script on the envelope.
John March.
Nothing else.
She turned around, expecting to find someone standing behind her. There was no one there.
But her raincoat was over the newel on the banisters, and her umbrella rested against it, and her bright red Wellington boots were neatly arranged at the foot of the stairs, and she hadn’t put them there.
*
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Smiley slid to a stop on the wet grass verge.
“Hey! I bet it’s this one.”
He pointed at a bungalow. The windows were all smashed on one side.
The guy with the beard was really struggling. Smiley reckoned he’d cut his feet to shit on the glass in his shop. He didn’t want to bring it up again, say sorry, have to go through the whole thing. It was done. He’d said sorry. The old man would have to put up with it.
Smiley didn’t think they’d have time to fuck around all night, hugging and making up. He got the impression daylight was a way off, but he could feel it. He was more alive at night.
Most nights he’d tried to stay out of the house. Sometimes he’d slept rough, in someone’s back garden or at a bus shelter or in the old rec where they’d met the policeman.
He thought of the policeman, when his night had turned to shit. If the big guy with the box had anything to tell him about the policeman, he’d be all ears. Smiley wasn’t a geek. He didn’t sit around in school all day, trying to learn pointless shit. He learned the useful stuff.
Knowing more about the policeman would be useful.
The fact was, knowing more about John would be useful, because he’d figured it out back in his bedroom. Seemed like ages ago, but it was probably only an hour or two.
The policeman had set them on the bearded man. The man he was looking at now.
Funny, then, how of all the people in town, they happened to meet him.
Smiley didn’t believe in coincidences. Not even when he was stoned off his tits. Things were either real or they weren’t. The policeman was real. This guy, John, he was real.
The policeman wanted John dead.
For now, it was just something he knew. Something real.
Smiley walked up to the window and boosted himself up, minding the glass.
“You don’t need to do that,” called John over the roaring wind and rain. “I’ve got the key.”
“Good for you,” said Smiley. He ignored the man and used his cuff to clear away some wicked shards from the base of the window.
“Smiley, wait for me!”
He sat on the windowsill, looking out.
“Go with the old guy, Mandy. I’m going to check it out.”
Then he slid into the house.
It was dark. Adult dark. He couldn’t see a thing. It was much lighter outside, in the rain. There was that strange glow coming from him, from his hands and his clothes. But it wasn’t enough to see by.
He put his hands out in front of him and felt his way forward.
He wasn’t scared.
He could smell blood.
In a way, seeing his dad stripped bare had freed him. He’d never been afraid of other kids. He’d had his share of fights. He’d won some, lost some. Won more than he’d lost. The worst he’d ever had was a loose tooth and a shoulder he couldn’t move for a couple of days.
He’d never been scared of grown-ups, apart from his dad. Now his dad was dead, what was the point of being scared anymore?
The smell of blood didn’t bother him at all. It just meant there was a dead person in the house, and dead people weren’t scary.
They were just dead.
He cracked his knee on something hard and swore. He reached down to feel what it was. Some little shitty table at the perfect height to catch him just under the kneecap.
He heard the door open with a crash. Blown in by the wind, he reasoned.
“Smiley?”
The guy’s voice.
“Smiley?”
Mandy. She sounded scared.
“I’m in here. I can’t see a fucking thing.”
Smiley could hear them talking out in the hall, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. He could see a blinking light through a door. A phone.
No, that was stupid. A phone wouldn’t work if the power was down.
“Fucking idiot,” he said, and took his mobile out of his pocket. He flipped it up to turn the screen on. Held it out in front of him so he could use its light like a torch. A shitty torch, but better than nothing. He navigated his way toward the blinking light.
“Smiley? Is that you?”
“Yeah. Use your mobile like a torch. Better than nothing.”
“I haven’t got a mobile,” said John.
“I have,” said Mandy.
Smiley half turned and lit his face with his mobile. He grinned.
“Woo-ooh.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Nothing’s funny tonight,” he agreed. “There’s something in the kitchen.”
He approached the blinking light. It was another mobile. A pretty old phone, but
the screen was flashing in front of a pile of candles and a box of matches.
Smiley lit a match and touched it to a candle.
“Oh …” John said, the air whooshing out of him. Mandy screamed.
Smiley’s gaze followed theirs.
There was a bloody skeleton in an armchair with a dead dog in its lap.
“You know who that is?”
“Mr. Hill,” said John.
“Who’s Mr. Hill?” said Mandy through chattering teeth.
“I wish I knew,” said John.
*
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Mr. Hill sat in the flickering light of fresh candles, facing John. John stared right back into the skeleton’s eye sockets. He half expected to see something there. A wink. A knowing look.
Mr. Hill’s remains grinned.
He had worn dentures. The upper dentures were resting on the lower jaw. The lower dentures were upside down on the dog. Betsy, John remembered.
He knew the old man’s dog’s name. He knew the old man’s name. That was about the extent of it.
“Mandy?”
She nodded at him. She was perched on the arm of the couch, looking out at the hallway—the farthest direction from the body in the armchair. She was shaking, both from the cold and the shock.
“I’m pretty messed up. Would you do me a favour?”
She nodded. John thought if he didn’t get her moving, she might end up like a statue of a girl, a memorial to wasted youth. Not one made of stone, but one stuck inside her body, petrified.
“Would you go into the bedroom, get a sheet? So we can cover him up?”
Smiley caught John’s glance.
“Come on,” Smiley said. “I’ll come with you.”
“Have a look and see if you can find any pills while you’re in there. Pain pills. Even paracetamol.”
When they had gone, he relaxed as best he could, and thought it out as best he could. They weren’t gone long, but in that time, he came to some conclusions.
Smiley threw the sheet over Mr. Hill. It was a relief not to have to stare into his empty skull.
“What do we do now?” said Smiley.
John wished Smiley hadn’t said that. That was the one thing he didn’t want to hear from Smiley or Mandy … or anyone else he should meet before this all went away.
Or they all died.
“What do we do?”
The worst possible question, because these kids—these people—they were looking to him to be an adult, to tell them what was going on and where they should go, and he didn’t have a fucking clue.
He thought that maybe saying all that was a bad idea.
“I’m not sure. I …”
“Why did you come here?” said Smiley. He didn’t sound so angry anymore. Tiredness was taking over. They were all worn thin, pushing themselves harder than people were meant to be pushed.
“Can we go?” said Mandy. She had a quilt wrapped around her shoulders. It wouldn’t do any good while she was in her wet clothes, but John wasn’t going to suggest she take them off.
Smiley took her arm. John wanted to make her feel better too. He didn’t know how to do it.
“Did you find any pills?”
“These,” she said. She held out her hand to John. To John, she looked frighteningly like a corpse, her skin was so pale.
He looked at the pills she held out. Ibuprofen. Better than nothing. He popped three dry with one for luck. His feet were screaming at him. His ribs were throbbing, and his head felt like all his life’s hangovers had returned to haunt him.
“This morning,” he began, “I had a call from a solicitor. It turns out Mr. Hill here left me everything he owned in his will. This house. All his money. I was hoping I could find out why. Search the house … I don’t know.”
“He’s not your uncle or anything, I guess, from the way you talk about him.”
“Definitely not. I’ve only known him a short time.”
“And the box?” said Smiley.
“Blood and bone, tooth and hair.”
“What’s that mean?” Mandy asked.
“I don’t know, except there’s a piece of bone, a lock of hair, and a tooth in there. No blood.”
“Shit. From a person?”
John nodded at Smiley. “As far as I can tell.”
“Shit,” said Smiley. “I thought it was you.”
“What?”
Smiley shrugged. “I thought it was you. The policeman … We met him. You know who I mean?”
John nodded, tight lipped.
“Well, that’s what the policeman wants, right? I mean, he drugged us up, sent us to your shop … must have been for the box. And what’s inside it.”
“That was my guess too. I didn’t know he sent you, but that sounds about right. I’m pretty sure it’s right. After you’d left, he tried to take it from me. He … ah … blew up.”
Smiley looked blankly at John. “Blew up?” No emotion. The boy was beyond shock, thought John. And probably way tougher than John would ever be.
“Yeah. He touched the box, and the box got hot. Really hot. He blew up.”
“Fuck off.”
John was too tired to argue. “You really think that’s so strange? After what’s happened tonight?”
“I don’t,” said Mandy. “It’s like some kind of magic or something.”
She saw the way they were looking at her.
“Well, it is.”
“Maybe it is,” said John. “I still don’t know what the policeman is, but I don’t think he’s dead.”’
“He was my dad.”
“What?”
“He came to us … after I hit you. He looked like my dad, but he wasn’t. He killed my dad.” Smiley pointed at the sheet. “Did that to him.”
John didn’t know what to say.
“Sorry,” was the best he could manage.
“Don’t be. He was a cunt,” said Smiley with real venom.
“If you give him the box, will he go away?” said Mandy.
John thought about it.
“Possibly. Probably.”
“You can’t give it to him,” said Smiley. John didn’t want to give the policeman the box. But he didn’t think he’d find agreement from this young angry man.
“We fucking can.”
“Mandy, he killed my dad. I hated him, but he’s got to pay.”
“Smiley …”
“No. He’s not having it.”
“It’s my box,” said John, then realised he was descending into childish tit-for-tat shit.
“Just give it to him.”
Smiley shook his head at Mandy, turned to John.
“Didn’t he tell you why he left you this stuff?”
“No,” said John. Then, “Fuck. Fucking idiot. Fuck.”
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the letter that he’d been given at the care home. It seemed so long ago. Like a lifetime had passed.
He’d been a different man then. Was it only yesterday? He thought about his wife for the first time that night. He felt guilty about it, but he pushed it away. She would be fine.
“I got this…” He was going to tell them how he got the letter. The way Mr. Hill had put it in one of the books he would take to the care home. Mr. Hill had to have been sure that the letter would be found and then handed to him.
The kind of prescience involved in Mr. Hill’s manipulation made John’s head spin. He was sure now Mr. Hill had engineered him getting the letter. The same way he’d left John everything in his will on the day of John’s birth.
He pushed the thoughts aside.
John March.
Just that, on the outside. The ink had run, and the letter was sodden. That would just cap it all, he thought. Carrying the letter around all bloody day, all night, just to remember it when the ink’s unreadable.
He carefully tore the flap open and pulled out a sheet of fine paper folded three ways to fit inside the envelope.
He unfolded it.<
br />
He could read it just fine.
It said: Trust Mabel.
Nothing more. Someone gasped. He looked up and saw an old lady in the doorway to the hall. She was wide eyed, her hand over her mouth. She stared at the sheet. The blood left on the bones had seeped through. David Hill’s bloody Halloween ghost, sheet and blood and all.
“Oh my God,” she said. “Is that David?”
John laughed. He didn’t want to. He couldn’t keep it in. He clapped a hand over his own mouth in a parody of the woman at the door.
“Let me guess. Mabel?”
*
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Marion’s face was blank as she entered the kitchen. Margaret and George sat on stools at a breakfast counter. Mugs of tea steamed. George had found a camp light somewhere and set it on the table. Their faces were pale and otherworldly in the glow.
“Is she OK?” said Margaret. “Are you OK? Marion?”
Marion walked stiff-legged to the cutlery drawer. Margaret spoke to her. George spoke to her. She couldn’t speak to them. She couldn’t find the words. Somewhere, deep down inside, the woman called Marion watched her body move, felt her fingers around the handle to the drawer. She could tell her fingers to clench and her arm to pull the drawer open, but she couldn’t understand what Margaret and George were saying to her.
George, a kind old man, was looking at her sadly.
The Marion inside saw him pat Margaret’s hand.
“It’s the shock,” he said, but she didn’t understand the words. She saw her fingers close around a knife. They gripped the blade. The blade cut into her fingers. Her fingers moved down the blade and gripped the handle of the knife.
“I’ll make you a cup of tea, love,” said George. “It’ll be morning, soon. We’ll get some help. Don’t you worry, girl. A bit of daylight and it’ll all seem like a bad dream.”
She nodded. She could do that. The small Marion inside screamed at George.
“Run,” she screamed, but she couldn’t make her voice obey.
Her traitorous arm swung the knife in her hand and plunged it into George’s neck.
She pulled the knife back. Blood pumped from the wound. George put a hand to his neck. His mouth was open wide. Someone was screaming. Marion swung the knife again and hit George’s cheek. The knife grazed along the bone and across the bridge of his nose. He tried to bat her arm away as she swung a third time. The knife stuck in his arm.
RAIN/Damned to Cold Fire (Two Supernatural Horror Novels): A RED LINE Horror Double: Supernatural Page 14
