Darker

by Simon Clark

  Ebullient. Yes, he felt ebullient. He checked it with his mental dictionary. Ebullient: overflowing, enthusiastic, exuberant. Yes indeedy. That fitted the slot all right. Singing to himself, he flipped over the sausages. Fat dripping onto the charcoal ignited in puffballs of yellow fire. He drained the can of beer. ‘Just one more. Or you’ll be horizontal by two – and that would never do.’ He chuckled.

  ‘What’s so funny, dear heart?’ asked Christine.

  He whistled appreciatively. She’d changed into shorts and a loose white blouse that was almost transparent at the back, yet heavily lacy enough at the front to be decent enough for daywear.

  ‘I just feel good to be alive,’ he said, grinning.

  ‘Pleased to hear it,’ she smiled back. ‘How are the sausages coming along?’

  ‘Nearly done. You could give Mark and Amy a call for their hot dogs.’

  Amy was running out down the path toward them. ‘Mum. Dad. Mum. That pop made me wee out of my eyes,’ she called excitedly.

  Christine dabbed her eyes with a tissue. ‘If you don’t drink it so fast it won’t make your eyes water.’

  ‘FOOD!’ When Richard heard the voice from behind, it startled him. ‘GIVE ME FOOD!’

  Chapter 15

  The Man in the Attic

  ‘FOOD! GIVE ME FOOD!’

  Richard forced a smile as he turned round. ‘Joey. What brings you to this neck of the woods?’

  ‘Got to see my favourite Sis, Dicky.’

  ‘Hallo, Joey!’ Christine called, genuinely pleased to see him. ‘Have a beer; they’re in the bucket.’

  ‘Cold beer, too. God’s teeth! The pair of you know how to live!’

  ‘I didn’t hear the car,’ Richard said.

  ‘Oh, I left it outside. Can’t stop.’

  Yipeeeeee! Richard thought with gusto.

  Christine smiled. ‘You can stay for a hot dog or something can’t you?’

  ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘Gonna sit with me, Uncle Joey?’ asked Amy. ‘That place is Mark’s, but he’s messing about upstairs. Boys! Boys, move out of the way so Uncle Joey can sit down.’

  While Christine and Amy made a fuss of Old Rubber Lip, Richard dropped more sausages onto the barbecue with a sigh.

  The buttons of Joey’s white shirt (the kind of shirt you’d wear with a business suit) took the pressure of his inflated gut. One day one of those buttons is going to ping off, thought Richard morbidly; and some poor wretch will lose an eye. Joey sat, talking like he was taking part in a contest to see who could squeeze most words into twenty minutes. Constantly he used a stubby-fingered hand to push back an oily-looking fringe; when he did pause from speaking for the odd millisecond his bottom lip, which always seemed too large for his mouth, would poke outwards. Richard noticed Joey looking greedily at the food spread out on the table; Joey Barrass’s eyes were as dark as his younger sister’s but they always appeared to be covered by a thin film that left them glazed and dull-looking whereas Christine’s were bright as gemstones.

  ‘Heavy on the mustard, Dicky Boy,’ Joey called before draining his can and crushing it.

  ‘Have another one,’ Christine pulled a can from the bucket.

  ‘Careful,’ Richard stabbed a fat sausage. ‘He’s driving.’

  ‘Won’t do any harm.’ Joey’s thick finger found the ring pull. ‘Like gnat’s pee, anyway.’

  Amy laughed.

  ‘Dear God,’ Richard murmured under his breath.

  ‘Got those proposals with me for you to look at.’

  ‘From the Egyptian developer?’

  ‘Yep. Also he faxed through the directions, so you can find his office without getting lost in the bloody Casbah.’

  ‘It’s going to be an expensive visit,’ Richard said, transferring sausages to bread buns. ‘If he’s so interested in Sunnyfields he should have come across here.’

  ‘That’s Egyptians for you.’ Joey’s fat face grinned. ‘Perhaps his Mummy wouldn’t let him.’

  Joey and Christine laughed loudly while Richard squirted on enough mustard to burn tungsten. ‘Here you are, Joey. Let me know if you need more mustard.’

  Joey munched through it. ‘Bloody gorgeous, Dicky Boy. You know, Christine, he’s going to make someone a decent housewife one day.’

  Richard called in the direction of the house. ‘Mark! Hot-dogs ready in five minutes! Come and get it or it’s bird food.’

  Joey hauled his lard butt over to where Richard stood at the barbecue. Joey looked pleased with himself; he pushed his oily fringe out of his eyes and said, ‘Who’s a lucky boy, then? You, in Egypt. Alone.’

  Richard’s smile didn’t quite come off. Christine sat with Amy in the shade of a tree, luckily too far away to hear.

  ‘Well, I don’t consider myself lucky, Joey. What I do consider is that I’ve drawn the short straw. I need this Egyptian trip like I need a hole in my head.’

  Joey chuckled wetly. ‘What, a young virile lad like you, all on your oni-owe in the land of belly dancers who’d do anything for the price of a Mars bar?’

  ‘You’ve got mustard on your chin, Joey.’

  ‘I’ve heard Egyptian girls like it pretty brutal and they’re not fussy where you stick your —’

  ‘Joey … look, if you think it’s such a hot place to visit why don’t you go?’

  His lip came out in an expression of a boy punished for doing nothing wrong. ‘Dicky. You know I’d have gone. But it clashes with the golfing weekend.’

  ‘Golfing? At least you got your priorities right.’

  ‘I’m not going for my own selfish pleasure, y’ know?’ He pushed back the fringe. ‘It’s business; you know, contacts; networking?’

  ‘It’s another of your piss-ups and you know it,’ Richard said with a broad artificial smile and Joey gave a hesitant laugh not knowing if Richard was joking or not.

  ‘Anyway,’ Joey sucked the mustard off his thumbs. ‘Forget the birds; when you get to Alexandria you can visit the pyramids or something.’

  ‘Alexandria?’ Richard looked at Joey’s rubber face in disbelief. ‘You told me the office was in Cairo. Joey, I’m booked on a bloody flight to Cairo, not bloody Alexandria.’

  ‘Cairo. Alexandria. It’s all Egypt, isn’t it?’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Joey. Alexandria and Cairo are hundreds of miles apart. Across an African country that I know as well as the dark side of the fucking moon.’ Richard cast a glance at Christine. She’d not heard that he was within a hair breadth of an argument with her brother. It’d be one way to shit up the day completely, but this tub of a man, who looked as if he was going to explode from that white shirt at any moment, could pitch Richard into a furious rage in sixty seconds flat.

  ‘There’s trains, aren’t there?’ Joey’s bottom lip came out. ‘Get a train. Stop an extra night if you have to.’ He smiled. ‘If you want to. Dusky-eyed maidens, Dicky Boy.’

  ‘I don’t want to stop another night,’ Richard said in a low voice. ‘I don’t want to go there at all. I’m flying out there on the Friday and I’ll be back on the Sunday once I’ve seen Mr Siyadd. And I’m only doing that because I’m clutching at straws. I’ve persuaded myself into half-believing, just half-believing you’ll notice, that this development plan might work and I can get that load of shit laughingly known as Sunnyfields out of my life for ever.’

  ‘Listen, Richard. That’s a valuable plot of land out there. You didn’t just marry my sister, you know, you married a pot of fucking gold.’

  ‘Pot of gold? It’s a pot of shit. Yes, you could dig out all the crap, pay for its decontamination, import fill for the foundations of a nice industrial estate of factories and warehouses and offices, but you know as well as I do, Joey, that even … even if you sold every shed at its market value you’d still walk away with a loss of around half a million.’

  ‘Okay, Richard. Tell Christine that. Tell her you’re saying that my father, Christine’s father, has left us in the shit?’

  Joey’s filmy
eyes had taken on a stony hardness now. He’d found the weak spot. Christine worshipped her late father. She believed everything he’d ever done had been shrewd to the point of being supernaturally clever. If Richard rubbished Sunnyfields he rubbished Biscuit Bobby Barrass, the backstreet orphan who’d made his fortune selling biscuits door-to-door then moved up into the property business.

  ‘Okay, Richard.’ Joey nodded heavily. ‘You win. We’ve been wasting our time. Sunnyfields is a big load of crap. Let’s go break the news to Christine.’

  ‘Joey. Look, don’t be hasty.’

  ‘No. You obviously thought it through. I’m going to tell Christine our father was a cretin to leave us saddled with a piece of land that’s worth bugger-all.’

  ‘Joey, there’s no point in —’

  ‘Christine? Christine,’ Joey called. ‘Can you come across here, I’ve got something to tell you.’

  Richard let out a lungful of air and stood with his hands on his hips. Let Joey blab, he thought, then I don’t have to keep pretending to Christine that everything’s all right and Sunnyfields is actually valuable. Then when Joey’s finished speaking I’m going to give him such a hell of a slap he won’t know what’s hit him. Actually, the mental image was surprisingly thrilling; he found himself relishing the idea of dishing out a stinging slap and Joey clutching his red cheek, those brown eyes round with shock and surprise.

  I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna do it, thought Richard, surprised at his own eagerness. I’m going to give him a slap he’ll remember until doomsday.

  ‘What is it?’ Christine asked, walking up.

  Joey began, ‘Richard has —’

  ‘Dad! Dad!’ Mark came running along the garden path. He was clutching his eye, his face bright red.

  ‘Dad! My eye!’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Christine reached him first. ‘For Godsakes, Mark, what have you done?’

  After Richard had managed to calm Mark down, the story came out. Mark had decided his haversack was in the attic after all. Ingeniously he worked out that if he stood on a chair and poked off the hatchway lid with the sweeping brush handle he could somehow hook the bag out by the handles. Part way through this inventive operation the plywood board had slipped down from the frame it rested on and whacked the boy in the face. After some dabbing with a piece of tissue Christine convinced him it hadn’t ruptured his left eyeball. That the injury consisted of a graze so slight it was barely visible to the naked eye.

  Richard and Mark left Joey to beer and burgers and went back into the house.

  ‘You know, I reckon I can reach into the attic and get your bag without bothering with hauling the ladders up out of the shed,’ Richard told his son.

  ‘Do you want the brush?’

  ‘No, thanks. No more accidents today if I can help it, thank you.’

  Richard positioned the dining room chair beneath the attic hatchway. When he stood on it, the top of his head was just an inch or so below the level of the hatchway. He was still too low to see anything but a gloomy void of the attic above him, but he reached in. He might be able to find the bag by touch alone. He was surprised to find that the first thing he touched moved quickly away from his fingers.

  Still unconscious in the hospital bed, Rosemary Snow felt the pains return to skewer her jaw and knee. The images that flowed through her head were now of the attic in the strange house. She’d seen the wooden board that covered the opening to the attic being lifted up; then it suddenly slipped down. The images had blurred. When they cleared again, she was looking down through the hatchway to a brown carpet covering a landing and stairs that were brilliantly sunlit. Running down the stairs was a boy; he clutched his forehead or his eye, she wasn’t sure which.

  Then there was a sensation of moving backwards.

  Then she was at the attic window. In the garden the family were having a barbecue. A fat man sat with them.

  There was movement forwards with an unlit light bulb passing her shoulder, then moving beneath wooden beams that rose diagonally to meet above. Then crouching.

  She looked down. She saw a hand holding an automatic pistol. The madman’s hand.

  She sensed the madman creeping forwards to the lip of the hatchway, the reflected light from below shining on particles of dust suspended in the air.

  She watched, feeling frustrated and helpless. Events in that family’s house moved to a climax. And she’d been able to do nothing to warn them.

  Stupid Rosemary Snow. Stupid, stupid. You should have dragged yourself out of bed and phoned the police. Now you’re going to watch that innocent family, the little girl, the little boy, suffer like you suffered.

  A hand, followed by a wrist, then a forearm, came up through the hatchway. It stayed there for a moment, swaying slightly from side to side like a strange, stumpy snake. Then it moved decisively. It touched the madman’s foot. The foot moved sharply back.

  The hand paused as if its owner was surprised by what it had just touched.

  ‘What’s wrong, Dad?’ It was the boy’s voice.

  ‘I don’t know. But for the life of me I think I just touched something that moved.’

  ‘A rat?’

  ‘No. Let’s see if I can feel it again.’

  The madman was crouching, the gun muzzle positioned to point in the man’s face as soon as he put his head above the hatchway.

  ‘Dad, lift me up to have a look.’

  ‘You’re joking, aren’t you? I’d break my back if I tried lifting you up here.’

  ‘I need my haversack, Dad, I’m going across to Tim Abraham’s tonight.’

  ‘I know, I’m trying to reach it for you. It’s no good. It must be further inside. Look, Mark, if you hold the chair still I’ll just lift myself up and have a proper look inside.’

  The hand with the gun moved nearer to the hatchway, the finger easing around the trigger.

  Any second now, Rosemary Snow. You’re to blame. Should have warned them. Now you’ll see what a plug of metal travelling at a thousand feet per second does to a man’s face. Bullet holes aren’t neat holes, they’re bloody holes, bloody enormous holes. Holes the size of eye sockets.

  Two hands gripped the timber lip of the hatchway. Rosemary saw the fingers grip tightly; she saw each finger, each fingernail, the hairs on the backs of the hands, the wedding ring.

  ‘Mark? Richard? Is this what you’re looking for?’ The woman’s voice.

  ‘Dad, it’s the haversack,’ shouted the boy, delighted.

  The man asked, ‘Where was it?’

  ‘In the cupboard under the stairs. Hurry up, Richard, I’ve put the steaks on the barbecue.’

  The hands disappeared. A second later the wooden board came up to be dropped back into place.

  The attic grew suddenly darker.

  Richard returned to the barbecue to find Joey chewing on great mouthfuls of steak.

  As Christine dished out more hotdogs for Amy and Mark who sat on a blanket in the shade of the tree she looked up at Joey.

  ‘Weren’t you going to tell me something?’

  Richard watched Old Rubber Lip smile a victorious smile. ‘Just that I’ve realized I’ve no reason to rush off. I’ll stick around for a while.’ He flashed Richard a greasy grin. ‘If you’ll have me, that is, Dicky Boy?’

  The smile didn’t come easy but Richard forced it. ‘Be my guest, Joey.’

  ‘Oh, sorry I ate your steak, sunshine. I thought you’d got more.’

  Richard’s laugh sounded more like a machine gun executing dissidents than an expression of amusement. ‘I’ll be all right with this, Joey.’ He viciously stabbed the sole surviving sausage and threw it onto the barbecue.

  * * *

  That evening the Youngs, Richard, Christine, Amy and Mark, stood by the driveway gates. At this time the Sheffield road was quiet. The hot summer’s day had turned pleasantly cool. Overhead the sky darkened and swifts were replaced by the bat shift as they took their turn to feed on moths and Daddy Longlegs.

  A car p
ulled up.

  ‘Have a good time,’ Richard said and ruffled Mark’s hair.

  ‘Behave yourself.’ Christine kissed him, which made him flush red. Richard grinned. When you’re that age, to be kissed by your mother in front of your friends is excruciating torture.

  They waved good-bye as Mark climbed into the back of the car. He was talking non-stop, excited by the prospect of his week-long camping trip.

  As the car pulled away the remaining Youngs waved until it had vanished into the distance. And for some reason Richard could not explain, he wished – he wished desperately – that he was going, too.

  Chapter 16

  Burnt in Blood

  It was when the man let himself down from the Youngs’ attic to find food in the middle of the night that he saw the two men walk into the garden. It was 2 a.m. The men didn’t walk so much as scurry like a pair of rats along the hedge.

  With the lights out he slipped into the dining room and through the sliding doors into the garden. Although the moon was on the wane, he could find his way easily enough along the path into the shrubbery. There he could watch without being seen.

  As he crouched behind a rhododendron his left foot gave a protesting ache from the sprain it had sustained when his car left the road three nights ago. He had no clear memories of those few hours immediately after the accident. Like a wounded animal he’d instinctively found somewhere to hide. He’d woken the next morning in the attic, his forehead throbbing where it had hit the steering wheel, his face caked with dried blood.

  He’d intended lying low a couple of days to recuperate before moving on. An automatic loaded with Glazier Safety Slugs that could drop a wild boar stone dead with a single shot would have disposed of any difficulties if the family had discovered they had a squatter up in their attic. But by accident he’d ended up talking to the little girl. She had told him surprising things.

  The runaway, Rosemary Snow, had seemed promising, too. Of course, he knew she lay dead in the long grass now, in a field fifty miles from here. But this little four-year-old, Amy, interested him. She had potential.