‘What is it?’ I shouted at him. ‘What can you see?’
Spanky dropped the crushed, lifeless ball of fur and bone on to the floor and picked up another.
‘He can’t see or hear me, all that’s visible to him is this little thing.’ He shook the kitten between his thumb and forefinger, then sharply twisted its head around. Its thin squeals were pitiful to hear. ‘I hate cats. They leave hairs on your clothes. I think this game has gone far enough, Martyn.’ He raised his voice over Chantery’s, who was crying out in alarm. ‘It’s about time you invited me in to stay. I can make it a very pleasurable experience for you.’
‘Get away from me.’
I rose from the chair and backed to the far wall. I didn’t want him standing so close to Chantery, who was studying the empty air like one of his cats.
‘I’m not going to hurt the old hippy,’ he said, scanning my mind. ‘There’s no point. He means nothing to you.’ He thought for a moment, studying Chantery. ‘Oh, I don’t know, though. Let’s give him a heart attack as a punishment for being annoying.’
‘No! Leave him alone!’
But Spanky had reached his right hand down into Chantery’s chest and was squeezing his heart, clawing his fingers over the pumping muscle, expelling the blood and forcing the valves to shut. Chantery released a sharp little sob of fright, as if he knew exactly what was happening, and fell on to his knees as Spanky yanked his hand free from the poor man’s ribcage. He flicked his dripping fingers at the floor, leaving a spray of crimson drops, then directed his attention away from the convulsing body.
‘No point in you rushing to the phone, Martyn, he’ll be dead before you dial. Actually, the organ was riddled with disease. It virtually came apart in my hand.’
I tried to push my way towards the writhing figure, but Spanky threw me back.
‘I said forget about him. Tonight I’m after different quarry. Let’s play something nastier, you and I. Just to remind you that I mean business. Let’s play Murder in the Dark.’
He was searching the floor, looking for another kitten to crush. Behind him, Chantery was suddenly still. Blood was gushing from his nose.
Spanky’s voice took on a playful tone. ‘I’ve got it, the perfect victim. It’s someone you know. Someone who doesn’t wash their hair very often. Someone of no use at all to society. Guessed it yet?’
He thrust out a petulant lip with an impatient sigh. ‘One last clue, then. His first name begins with an unusual letter.’
There was a telephone on the sideboard. I ran to it and dialled Zack’s number.
‘Ssshh,’ Spanky was hissing into his hand, ‘storm’s coming and the lines are down!’
I skidded across the waxed wooden floor, and was out of the room before Spanky had a chance to move. This time I had a head start.
But as I reached the front door and yanked it open, I knew that the daemon would find a way to be there first. To give Zack final, terrible proof of his existence.
Chapter 32
Immolation
As I had on the night Paul died, I found myself running through the darkened streets in an attempt to save a life.
The wind had risen, bringing with it squalls of freezing rain, and my sneakers slipped on the freshly doused pavements. There was nothing I could do but head for Zack’s apartment. With a sinking sense of horror I imagined Debbie, heavy with her unborn child, fighting to protect her lover’s life.
As I rounded the corner I was amazed to see a black taxi with its light on, coming toward me through the rain. I hailed it and jumped in, gave the driver Zack’s address and asked him to get there as quickly as he could. He made no reply, and pulled away from the kerb at a slow, deliberate pace.
We turned up toward Kensington. I sat forward in the seat and watched the empty streets crawl past beyond the condensation-smeared window. I tried not to think of the odds stacked against my arriving in time.
The taxi missed one set of lights, then another. It had moved to the inside lane, and seemed to be creeping along more slowly than any of the surrounding traffic. I knocked on the connecting glass, but the driver ignored me and remained hunched over the wheel.
I tried to slide open the window, but oddly, it was bolted shut. The door handles were immovable. The locking lights glowed red; they were controlled from the driver’s cabin. I hammered on the glass, shouting as we suddenly accelerated, running a red light and narrowly missing a cold-storage truck.
Suddenly, the driver turned around to stare at me.
‘Blimey, guv, I don’t think I’m going your way at all.’ Spanky laughed, white teeth flashing as his mouth opened wide, then wider and wider until his head split apart into a polished black morass of insects, beetles, scorpions, flies and ants fountaining everywhere as his body dissolved into teeming, spidery life. Moments later there was no one driving the cab at all, which was picking up speed as it moved from its course across the central reservation and into the opposing traffic lane.
An oncoming Honda Accord broadsided the cab with a shattering metallic slam and span off toward the pavement, sliding over the wet tarmac. There was another crunch as the side of the cab connected with a steel lamppost and we rocked to a standstill. The side window had smashed with the impact.
With an effort born of panic, I was able to pull myself through it. I ran forward on wobbling legs as a woman began to scream and pedestrians appeared from nowhere. I prayed someone would see to the injured Honda driver. Only I knew that Zack was about to lose his life.
At the next corner I stopped, winded. Just a few streets now. I hadn’t realized it but I was crying, tears mingling with the rain that streaked my face. Zack had done nothing wrong. I should never have involved him. I couldn’t—wouldn’t—let him die.
As I ran into the familiar turning I was assailed with remembrances of my former life, sharing with Zack, leaving him in the apartment while I went to the store, drinking cheap wine while his friends tried to convince me there were supernatural forces on earth. Where was my superior, sceptical attitude now?
I reached the front door and rang the bell, gasping for breath. The first-floor lights were on, good sign, but the door was unlocked, bad.
Harder to breathe now.
Ran through the hall and took the stairs two at a time. Reached his front door and hammered on it with both fists. Stepped back and waited, fighting to draw breath.
I could hear someone inside.
Footsteps coming. Latch coming off.
‘Hey, man, you can use the bell, it would be less aggressive, you know?’ He was fine, same old Zack, scratching himself, hair all over the place. Behind him, Debbie was walking stiffly into the hall.
‘Zack, you have to get out right now, he’s coming. Right now.’ I couldn’t catch my breath, words strangling in my throat.
‘Who’s coming? How’d you get in? Did somebody leave the front door open?’
‘Spanky,’ I managed to gasp. ‘Coming for you.’
His old look of fear returned. He knew better than to disbelieve me. ‘Why me, man? I’ve done nothing.’
‘Wants to hurt me.’ I was pulling him toward the door.
‘Then let him hurt you. Christ—Debbie, come here.’
She was standing in her dressing-gown with her arms pulled in around her, confused. ‘I don’t understand, Zack. What’s going on?’
‘Martyn here has got this, like, really pissed-off daemon after him, and he’s coming for a visit. Get some clothes on.’
Stupidly, they began walking further back into the flat. I needed them out, but couldn’t manage the words. As I tried to speak the air was torn from my throat, and I felt myself starting to black out.
The front door slammed, making us both jump, and I realized my mistake.
Spanky had been waiting in the main hall, and had entered the apartment when Zack opened the door. I turned and pulled at the lock, but it couldn’t have moved less if it had been welded shut.
‘The window!’ I shouted hoars
ely. ‘Is there a way to climb down?’
‘I don’t know! I’ve never tried to jump out of a fucking window before; I’m not Batman!’
Zack ran back along the corridor as the lights overhead buzzed and cracked into blackness.
‘Is there anyone else in the house?’ I asked Debbie, pushing her through to the lounge.
‘Only the Wallaces,’ she replied. They were the old couple who lived on the ground floor, both in their eighties and as deaf as the dead.
The lights had burned out right through the apartment.
‘Where are you?’ Zack called.
I could see him outlined by the streetlight coming in from the far windows of the lounge. Outside, the rain fell in a blind reflective sheet. The three of us stood waiting, catching our breath; something terrible was about to happen.
There was an electric charge rising in the room. I could smell the ozone, and felt the static building in my clothes, prickling my skin.
‘What’s happening?’ called Debbie. ‘Zack, what’s going on?’
‘I don’t—’
‘He’s here.’
Through a sparkling haze I remembered the network of drainpipes that extended beneath the kitchen window. Grabbing Debbie’s hand, I pulled her in their direction.
‘I want to stay with Zack!’ she screamed, as if she already knew that he would not move from his spot in the middle of the room. As we watched, a garish blue glow snaked around him, dragging him to the tips of his toes, gently forcing him up to his fullest height.
‘I can feel it, Debbie!’ he called out, tipping back his head and watching excitedly as the accelerating static lifted his hair around his face, waving it back and forth before his eyes like the fronds of an underwater plant. ‘It’s wonderful!’
The storm continued to bristle around him as though his body was a generator, and then the rope of electricity snapped, cracking itself around his face and neck, piercing his throat, forcing open his jaws, illuminating his tongue and the cavity of his nose like a living X-ray. Spears of lightning were playing everywhere on him, running across his teeth to make his fillings glow red-hot, punching at his eyes, drilling into his ears.
For a split second I saw Spanky’s figure etched in flame. Then there was a massive, silent flash, and the storm was gone.
Zack fell heavily forward to the floor, and we saw that his hair, his shoulders and back were glowing like the carbonized embers of a dying fire.
I grabbed at the Mexican blanket covering one of the armchairs and threw it across him, smothering the flames. Even in the dark, we both knew he was dead. The room was filled with the sweet stench of charring skin. Debbie began to scream, so I hugged her tight, and stayed there hugging her until her sobs subsided to a level wail.
I still couldn’t get the front door open, and finally had to prise out the lock with a knife-sharpener. The fuses had blown, and the telephone line was dead.
Spanky had gone. He had taken Zack’s life but left his girlfriend and their unborn child unharmed. As if I should be thankful to him.
I had been such a witless bloody fool. I’d returned to Zack bringing evil right to his door, acting once more as a conduit for the daemon’s murderous malice.
Chapter 33
Pugilism
We called an ambulance from the phonebox at the end of the road. When the men arrived they were horrified by the state of Zack’s body, and immediately notified the police.
It was a gruelling night.
Unsurprisingly, everyone wanted to know what had happened. They could see that Zack had received a huge electric shock, but could find no dangerous or exposed wiring near the site where he had fallen. Debbie and I described what we had seen to a pair of officers, a man and a woman who behaved as if they didn’t believe a single word of our story.
I was questioned in a separate room, and questioned again until they could see that we were telling the truth. How could we not be? The police shut down the mains supply to the flat and suggested that we make alternative accommodation arrangements for the night, as the place could still be unsafe.
They gave Debbie a lift to her sister’s house. Before she left, she looked back at me with blazing hatred in her eyes. I knew she thought that if Zack had not opened the door to me, he would still be alive tonight.
I refused a lift and stumbled off in the direction of my wrecked apartment, more disoriented and frightened than ever. Realizing that I couldn’t walk all the way, I stopped a minicab and had him take me to Bow.
When I got there I found that my wallet was missing. Either Spanky had taken it, or it had dropped out in Zack’s flat. The cab driver threatened to duff me up, but I was bigger than him and a lot more desperate. He drove off, streaking out in a squeal of tyres.
The lock had been changed on the door, and there was a letter addressed to me taped across the bell.
The lease had been cancelled due to ‘the non-fulfilment of the rental agreement’, which I took to mean that the standing order had been rescinded; Spanky tampering with computer records again. No reply had been received to their previous enquiry, etc., etc. Worse, the flat and its contents had been impounded by the landlord because of the damage I had allegedly caused, and because of constant complaints from the other tenants about noise. Prosecution would probably result. My belongings were stored with the caretaker. Should I attempt to gain entry to the apartment, I would find that the alarm code had been changed, and the police would be instantly notified.
Big fucking deal.
It was 4.32 a.m.
Zack was dead.
Debbie was terrified.
I had £4.72 in my pocket.
No wallet.
No watch.
No clothes but the ones I stood in.
And nowhere to go.
I couldn’t head for Sarah’s, even if she would have me. I could no longer trust myself with her—or anyone else, for that matter. He was with me wherever I went, dogging my footsteps, turning me into a plague-carrier.
I screamed, ‘What do you want from me!’ and kicked at the wall, over and over until the lights went on in the corridor and doors began to open. Then I had to make a run for it, before the neighbours called the police.
Out on the street it was raining harder than ever, filling one of my sneakers with icy water. I set off in no particular direction, without a destination, glad to be moving away from the apartment.
Oddly enough, it was an image of Joey that filled my mind as I walked. Thinking about him still made me angry. In the last weeks of his life the thing I remembered most was his evasiveness, always leaving a room when I asked him a difficult question, always acting like he had something more important to do than talk to me.
As I walked toward the railway bridge, its brick arches built to hold in shadows, a hazy figure divorced itself from the blackness and strolled to the light. I recognized the gaunt yellow face immediately. He was in his old striped pyjamas, and the jacket collar was way too big, a sure sign that he was dying. His feet were bare, and he didn’t seem to notice that he was standing in a puddle of dirty water. He seemed very real. The water was absorbing into the cuffs of his trouser bottoms.
‘Hello, Martie.’
‘Hello, Joey.’
‘You look like shit, little brother.’
‘At least I’m not dead, like you. Spanky send you here?’
‘I don’t know. You tell me. The last thing I remember is being back in my old bedroom at Twelvetrees.’
‘Listen, this isn’t going to work.’
‘What isn’t going to work?’
‘You’re not my brother. You look like him and sound like him, but Joey’s dead.’
‘Spanky can bring memories to life, Martie. You’ll be able to as well, once he’s inside you.’
‘So you know who he is, then. I suppose he’s made a convert out of you, wants you to persuade me that it’s better on the other side.’
‘He doesn’t want to hurt you, Martie. He likes you, and he
wants what’s best for you, believe me.’
‘Why would I believe you?’
I knew that Joey’s effigy was just another weapon in Spanky’s armoury, but still found myself responding to him as if he were my dead brother. ‘You lied to me when you were alive, why shouldn’t you now? I’m not letting him in, Joey. He can find himself another host.’
Joey leaned back against the wet, black bricks of the arch and released a long sigh, like gases being released from a corpse. ‘You don’t know how difficult you’re making this, Martie. He’ll hurt me. You don’t want to see me hurt, do you?’
‘I don’t give a flying fuck, actually,’ I said, looking into the brambles at the trampled fence that hedged one side of the arch. Reaching into the undergrowth on the embankment, I pulled one of the wooden staves free from its torn wire mooring and hefted it in my hand.
‘But Martie, think of the things you’ll be able to do once he inhabits you, the places you’ll visit, the sights you’ll see.’
‘In the last few weeks I’ve seen enough sights to last a lifetime,’ I replied, breaking into a run and ramming the pointed end of the stave hard into Joey’s chest.
There was a pop of foul air and the figure collapsed like a rubber balloon, liquefying into the shadows until the stave became unanchored and fell to the ground.
I walked out of the archway and didn’t look back at the putrefying mass on the pavement. That thing had not been my brother. Joey—the real Joey—had never called me Martie in his life. If Spanky wanted to trick me, he had to learn not to trust what he read in my mind. I was pleased with myself. For once, I’d been one step ahead of him.
I stayed in the backstreets, moving from one empty road to another, lost in a maze of neat terraced houses, getting wetter, growing angrier. Spanky had taken back a lot more than he had given me, that was for damned sure.
I hadn’t eaten for ages, but at least my nervous empty stomach had energized me. Now, though, the effect was starting to wear off, and exhaustion was setting in. My legs felt as though lead weights had been attached to them. I just needed shelter, a dry place to sleep. So this was what it felt like to be homeless.
Spanky Page 24
