Afterwalkers

by Tom Becker

  “We’re on the Moss,” Sarge told him, with quiet satisfaction. “Nearly there now.”

  A low, late-autumn sun nudged its way through the white clouds overhead, offering a wan glare but little warmth. A small wood appeared on the horizon, guiding the road into its heart. Something about the bare, spindly branches reaching up into the pale sky made Jamie shiver.

  Sarge eyed him suspiciously. “What’s up with you?”

  “Nothing,” Jamie said quickly.

  “It’s all this open space, Sarge,” said Liam. “Gets you down if you’re not used to it.”

  “There’s an atmosphere out here, all right,” murmured Sarge. “You might think everything’s quaint and sleepy but country ways are old ways. There are all sorts of strange carryings on in the countryside: midnight rituals, sheep mutilations…”

  “…demon farmers…” added Liam.

  “Demon farmers,” agreed Sarge, with a straight face.

  “Leave it out,” Jamie said sulkily. “You’re not funny.”

  “I’m not joking!” said Liam, his laughing eyes betraying him. “Haven’t you heard about the Deadly Demon Farmer that haunts these parts?”

  “Watch out, boy!” Sarge chuckled. “He’s coming to get you!”

  “Oooooahhhh!” drawled Liam in a yokel accent, waggling his hands menacingly in front of Jamie’s face. “I’m gurna run yer ovurr in my trarcterrr… !”

  There was a shockingly loud bang as something flew into the van’s windscreen, spreading a cobweb of cracks out across the glass. Sarge swerved, yelling with surprise, and had to wrestle with the steering wheel to stop the van from nose-diving into a ditch.

  “What the—?” he snarled, slamming on the brakes.

  The van came to a skidding halt on the edge of the raised road. Liam had opened his door before they’d stopped moving; now he jumped out and began sprinting across the field towards the trees to their left.

  “Stay here!” Sarge barked at Jamie, unbuckling his seat belt.

  Jamie watched dutifully as his dad’s wiry frame hared across the field after Liam, shouting violent threats at their unseen assailant hiding in the trees. When the pair of them had melted into the wood, Jamie slid down from his seat and stepped on to the road. The echoes of breaking glass and squealing brakes rang in his ears. There was an acrid smell of burnt rubber, black scars on the tarmac where Sarge had battled to keep the van’s tyres on the road. At that moment, standing alone on the raised road running through the Moss, Jamie could have been the only person left in the world.

  Padding round to the front of the van, Jamie traced his finger along the windscreen’s jagged wounds. He found the rock that had caused all the damage lying by the side of the road, dusted in shards of glass. It felt murderously heavy in his hand. Whoever had thrown it had not only been a dead-eyed shot, but incredibly strong to boot.

  There was still no sign of Liam or Sarge. As Jamie watched, a flock of birds rose from the wood amid a flurry of wings and climbed into the sky. The wind played on the back of his neck, causing the hairs to tingle and stand on their ends. Jamie dropped the rock where he had found it and stood up. Shielding his eyes from the low sun, he scanned the fields behind him. The breath caught in his throat.

  A girl was hurrying along the rutted earth towards the wood, her loosely braided blonde hair fanning out behind her as she went. She was dressed in a long skirt that reached down to her ankles and a buttoned-up white blouse beneath a black shawl. As the girl walked on, Jamie waved at her, but she didn’t seem to notice either him or the van, her attention fixed on the wood in front of her. She slowed as the shadow of the trees fell over her, and Jamie felt a sudden, inexplicable urge to warn her away.

  There was no need. Suddenly she was standing right in front of him. But this was no longer the bright vision he had seen hurrying through the fields. This girl’s hair was tangled with weeds and her clothes were wet through, water cascading from her skirt and shawl on to the road where it formed a puddle on the tarmac. The girl’s face was puffy and her skin had turned blue, as though she was covered from head to toe in terrible bruises. Staring at Jamie through sullen, lifeless eyes, she slowly raised her arm and pointed at him.

  “Jamie!”

  He turned, his heart thundering in his chest, to see Liam re-emerging from the trees. The girl had vanished at the sound of his brother’s voice. As Liam jumped over the ditch and climbed up on to the road Sarge appeared behind him, red-faced and blowing hard. There was a murderous look in his eyes.

  “Did you find them?” Jamie called out.

  Liam shook his head. “Whoever chucked it scarpered.”

  “Lucky for them they did,” Sarge said ominously. “If I’d got my hands on them they’d have got a few sharp words in their shell-like. That rock could have killed us.”

  Liam frowned, looking back towards the woods. “Hell of a shot, like. Don’t reckon I could have thrown it half that distance. Who were they, Superman?”

  “Maybe it was an accident,” Jamie suggested.

  “An accident?” Sarge’s voice rang with incredulity. “And how d’you figure that, son?”

  “I don’t know,” Jamie said defensively. “Things fall out of the sky all the time, don’t they? Meteors and asteroids, stuff like that. Maybe that’s what this was.”

  “Aye, and maybe one of them landed on your head when you were a baby,” Sarge snorted. “It might explain a lot. Meteors and asteroids.”

  “You all right, little bro?” asked Liam. “You look a bit spooked.”

  As much as Jamie was desperate to tell his brother what he had seen, a single glance at Sarge told him that now was not the time to be talking about strange girls appearing out of nowhere. Strong, tough and brave. Not a coward or a daydreamer, or a mother’s son…

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “Glad to hear it,” said Sarge. “Now let’s get on to Alderston. This place is starting to give me the creeps.”

  They scrambled back inside the vehicle, Sarge peering around the crater in the windscreen as he turned the key in the ignition. As the van pulled away, its tyres rolled through a shallow film of water on the tarmac, a glinting pool of tears in the weak sunlight.

  There was no sign saying Alderston welcomed careful drivers. There was no welcome at all; just a sharp breeze whipping in off the Irish Sea and across the surrounding fields. Terraced houses sheltered in a dip by the side of a steep hill, linked by a burrowing network of cobbled streets. A church hewn from dark stone slabs kept a brooding vigil over the town from the top of the hill.

  Haunted by his vision of the girl on the Moss, Jamie sat quietly in the front seat as they drove past the church and headed down the hill towards the town centre. Beneath a clock tower in the main square an outdoor market was closing down for the day, traders packing away their stalls and wheeling trolleys of clothes back towards their vans. Sarge drove on, taking a sharp right down a side street where the picturesque facade of the village began to peel away like an old coat of paint. The shopfronts became more run-down, turning into hollow spaces or walls of metal shutters. Two men were arguing outside a betting shop beside a pub with boarded-up windows.

  It was typical Sarge. Drop him off in the centre of any town and within an hour he’d be guaranteed to have found the shadiest business or the roughest pub, where he’d be laughing and slapping everyone on the back like they were old friends. Jamie rarely felt comfortable around Sarge’s various acquaintances and associates. Even their jokes were weapons of a sort; their laughter came in harsh barks and never reached their eyes. In order to protect himself Jamie tried to hide in Sarge or Liam’s shadow, vanishing into the background.

  The van slowed as it passed a shabby-looking building with the sign “Roxanne’s Cabs” above the door, Sarge peering in through the grilled window. He parked the van on the other side of the street and turned off the engine
.

  “We’re here,” he said.

  “So who’s this woman we’re going to meet, then?” Liam demanded. “And don’t give me any more rubbish about spiders.”

  Sarge stabbed a finger in the direction of the cab firm. “It might not look like much from the outside, my boys, but from inside this building Roxanne spins a web that stretches out across the entire country. She knows everyone who’s worth knowing – and a few others who you’re better off not knowing.”

  “All right,” Liam said crisply. “So what does she want with us?”

  “That, my lad, is the reason we are here.”

  Sarge opened the door and hopped smartly down from the van, seemingly unaffected by a night and day’s long drive. Jamie and Liam followed him as he crossed the street and marched inside the taxi firm. They found themselves in a cramped waiting room that smelled of sweaty armpits and chip-shop wrappers. In a glass booth an overweight man in a short-sleeved shirt sat at a raised counter, flicking through a newspaper.

  “Where you headed?” he asked, without looking up.

  “Through that door behind you,” Sarge replied. “Don’t think we’ll need a cab for it, though.”

  “It’s private back here,” the man said shortly. “If you don’t want a cab you can hop it.”

  “Now, now,” chided Sarge. “Let’s not start off on the wrong foot. Why don’t you lift yourself off your seat, go through there and tell Roxanne that Sarge and his boys are here to see her, just like she asked.”

  The man stared at Sarge through heavy-lidded eyes. Then he closed his newspaper with a deep sigh.

  “Wait here.”

  He disappeared through the door behind him, reappearing after a minute or so to press a switch underneath the counter. There was a loud buzz, and then the door leading into the glass booth clicked open. Sarge went first, nodding at the man behind the desk before heading down the corridor.

  “Jobsworth,” he muttered.

  In his head Jamie had imagined the lair of the Spider-Woman to be some kind of draughty cave draped in deadly, intricate patterns of silken strands. Instead he found himself in a shabby office with threadbare carpet and a thick smell of floral air freshener. Roxanne, a large woman with tightly curled blonde hair and several double chins, was sitting at a desk talking on a mobile phone – one of four laid out in front of her, neatly arranged either side of a sleek laptop. The rest of the desk was covered in smiling family photographs. Behind Roxanne a daytime show was playing on mute on the television, whilst a net curtain had been drawn across the window, obscuring the view of the car park behind the building.

  “All right, keep your hair on!” she said down the phone, her northern accent rich with exasperation. “I’m sending Greg round now. Yes, ten cases of whiskey. Yes, he knows to take it round the back. He has done this before, you know – which means he knows how much you owe him for it, so you’d better have the money in full or you won’t get anything at all.”

  She had barely rung off when another phone began buzzing on her desk. Roxanne raised her hand apologetically and answered it.

  “Hello, love,” she said. “Everything all right? I’m at work, aren’t I! It’s all right … Keeley did what? You’re kidding me! She’s a regular Black Maggie, that one, and no mistake. Listen, Donna, I’ll have to call you back in a minute. Ta ra.”

  She put down the phone. “Sorry about that, Sarge,” she said. “That was my daughter.”

  “Understand completely,” Sarge said gallantly. “One parent to another. It’s good to see you again, Roxanne.”

  “Likewise. Been a while. How’s business?”

  “Busy.”

  “Tell me about it.” Roxanne gestured at the phones in front of her. “I spend so much time talking on these bloody things that there are days I’m afraid my tongue’s going to drop off.”

  “You should be careful,” Sarge said. “Heard using those things can give you cancer.”

  “If you believe what you read in the papers, everything can give you cancer,” Roxanne replied evenly. “I’ll take my chances.”

  Outside an engine roared as a vehicle entered the car park at speed, coming to a stop outside the window of Roxanne’s office in a squeal of brakes. Through the net curtain Jamie could see the lurid red gleam of a car’s chassis.

  “Greg!” Roxanne exclaimed, relieved. “About bloody time, too!”

  The back door to the office opened and a teenager sauntered inside. He was older than Jamie, dressed in tracksuit bottoms, white trainers, and a red polo shirt with the collar turned up. Instinctively, Jamie shrank back and looked down at his feet. Boys like Greg always seemed to zero in on him, safe in the knowledge he was too scared to answer back.

  “All right, Roxanne?” Greg asked nonchalantly.

  “No, I am not bloody all right!” she shot back. “I’ve had Raj in my ear wanting to know when you were going to show up. Where’ve you been?”

  Greg shrugged. “Nowhere.”

  “Nowhere, my foot. You’ve been seeing my Donna again, haven’t you?”

  “What if I have? Isn’t a law against it, is there?”

  “When it comes to you, Greg Metcalfe, there should be,” Roxanne told him. “I know how many girls you’ve been out with. We’ll talk about this later. Take the cab over to Raj’s – the cases are already in the back seat.”

  “No sweat,” Greg replied. “I’ll take it round now. Tell Raj I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  “Yeah, I know how you drive: like a bleeding maniac! You take care with that stuff or there’ll be hell to pay! And stay away from my daughter!”

  Greg smirked knowingly at Jamie, and headed out towards the waiting room.

  “Right then,” said Roxanne, sitting back in her chair with a sigh. “Where were we?”

  “I can see you’re busy, so we’ll take up no more of your time than we have to,” Sarge told her. “I came to speak to you in person because I’d heard you were trying to get hold of me.”

  “Ah, that’s right,” Roxanne replied. “I had a gentleman enquiring whether you were looking for work. He asked for you by name.”

  “A gentleman?” Sarge raised an eyebrow. “There’s none too many of those about these days. What’s this gentleman’s name?”

  “He’d prefer to remain anonymous for now,” said Roxanne. “Until he knows whether you’re interested or not.”

  Sarge scratched at the stubble on his cheek – a sure sign that he was unhappy, Jamie knew. “Right. Any details as to the manner of work he was offering?”

  “Far as I know, it’s a local job,” Roxanne replied. “In your usual line of work – removals. You can stay in the Lodge by the churchyard while you wait for him to get in touch.”

  “He’s offering to put us up?” asked Liam.

  “Keys were delivered here today,” Roxanne replied.

  “So we get a place to stay, but no client or job,” said Sarge.

  “I thought you might be grateful for a bit of R and R in between jobs,” Roxanne replied.

  “R and R?” Sarge chuckled thinly. “Not really my style, Roxanne. Tell your mystery man thanks but no thanks. I like to look a man in the eye and shake him by the hand before doing business. I’m old-fashioned like that.”

  A phone lit up on Roxanne’s desk. She switched it off without checking the caller.

  “Take my advice, Sarge,” she said quietly. “From someone who’s known you a long time: don’t turn this one down.”

  “What’s this, an offer I can’t refuse?”

  “Let’s just say this is someone you want to keep on the right side of.”

  “So am I, Roxanne,” said Sarge, leaning over the edge of her desk. “And I don’t like being threatened.”

  It was as if the office had been plunged into a bucket of ice. Jamie had seen some hard-bitten men back down when
Sarge got in their face but Roxanne stared calmly back at him, without a trace of fear in her eyes.

  “Hang on,” said Liam, placing a hand on his dad’s arm. “Sarge, can I have a word?”

  Liam drew Sarge out into the corridor, leaving Jamie alone with Roxanne in the back office. She immediately started texting on one of her phones while Jamie waited awkwardly, his ears just able to pick up the sound of his brother’s whisper from the corridor.

  “…and have you heard the state of Jamie’s cough?” Liam was saying. “He’s coming down with something and more rattling around in the van isn’t going to do him any favours. Where’s the harm in at least checking out this house? If it doesn’t look on the level we’ll get in the van and drive off. But let’s at least look, eh?”

  Jamie’s face reddened. He hated it when his family talked about him like he was a baby. Yet at the same time, he was praying that Liam could talk Sarge round. Even if it was for one night – just one night in a warm house and a proper bed, one night free of the stale prison of the van.

  Sarge muttered something under his breath that Jamie couldn’t catch, and there was a long pause before they came back into the room. But when they did, Sarge nodded at Roxanne.

  “On second thought, no harm in having a gander at the place,” he said. “Got those keys?”

  Roxanne pulled open a drawer and rummaged around inside. Pulling out a set of keys, she handed them over to Sarge. “The Lodge is the last house at the bottom of Church Hill,” she said. “You can’t miss it.”

  “Right you are.” Pocketing the keys, Sarge paused. “Listen, on the way up here we had a little incident in the woods at the edge of the Moss. You know of any local jokers who like to hang out round there?”

  “The woods?” Roxanne gave him a curious look. “No one goes there unless they have to, not even the kids. Why, what happened to you?”