Life's Lottery

by Kim Newman

  Hackwill has taken the blame for Warwick and McKinnell.

  ‘One thing bothers me,’ you say. ‘Why did you kill Warwick and McKinnell?’

  ‘Me!’ James is shocked you can think such a thing. ‘Me?’

  Your brother stays away from you for a while. After all, you’re a murderer and he isn’t.

  Eventually, he comes round. He realises you killed to protect him. That’s what it’s all about.

  Now all you have to worry about is Mary. Your relationship had better be for ever, because she’s the only one outside the family who knows what happened.

  After a while, worry frays your nerves. Sleeping next to Mary, you find yourself holding the pillow, remembering Hackwill’s body under you.

  What to do? What to do?

  And so on.

  Begin again?

  288

  You leap across the room. Hackwill’s knife cuts through Mary’s neck …

  in slo-mo, you see skin and flesh part and blood burst, and your heart dies

  … and is waiting for you.

  You slam against Hackwill’s knife, but get your hands round his neck. You feel the blade in your chest, a hard obstruction, and hear your heartbeat. You’re going to last long enough to finish him.

  You see life die in Hackwill’s eyes. He can’t believe you’ve killed him. You roll off the dead councillor and look at the blurry ceiling.

  Reg Jessup is going to have to answer for this. You almost laugh.

  Your hand flounders, but finds Mary’s. With your last strength, you grip her hand. Sticky blood binds your palm to hers. You feel the grip returned.

  You both die. In love.

  Go to 0.

  289

  Instinctively, you grip the rope, taking the strain in your arms.

  The full weight of James and Hackwill, bulked up by rainwater, drags at you.

  The shelf is slippery. You are pulled forward. You are in the air. Below you, rope flapping between you, James and Hackwill tumble.

  You see the grey of the ground.

  Go to 0.

  290

  If you get Hackwill outside, you can cart him to a river that flows underground. Throw him in there and the body will never be found. Your story will be that he knocked you out and made a run for it. You’ll clout yourself later to back that up.

  You wrap him in a duvet cover and toss in his clothes and boots, even his knife. It’s a heavy sack — too many municipal free lunches in his gut — but you make it downstairs and out of Castle Drac.

  You’re wearing pyjamas and the temperature is down around zero. At least it’s not raining.

  You hump Hackwill along the grass, hauling him towards the pens. You muffle your sobs of exertion. The bundle is heavy, awkward. You’re leaving a dragging track that will be obvious in the daytime.

  A light goes on in the cottage. You haul harder and the duvet cover splits. A white hand sticks out. Is it clutching the grass, anchoring you?

  People come out of Castle Drac, running towards you.

  Someone tackles you and hammers you to the ground. A torch shines. James is on top of you. He looks surprised.

  ‘I thought you were dead,’ he says.

  ‘No,’ Mary comments. ‘That’s Hackwill.’

  Oh God, you’ve fucked this up.

  ‘What were you thinking of?’ James asks.

  You have no answer.

  ‘I can’t help you now,’ James says.

  And so on.

  Begin again?

  291

  You visit Mary in hospital. Suffering from exposure and shock, she has lapsed into semi-coma. Stuck full of tubes, she looks like a little girl in a true-life TV movie. Her doctor, knowing what you went through with her, lets you in to watch her for a while. He thinks it might help.

  You work out how it might have been. Mary worked for Hackwill, even when she was a policewoman. When she vandalised your home, she was under his orders. Shane was hired beef, just for show. Mary, who used to be a monster, was the effective one, the wetwork specialist.

  ‘Did you, Mary?’ you ask.

  Her respirator goes up and down. Her cardiogram beeps.

  ‘McKinnell would have been easy. Too wrapped up in gut-ache to hear anyone coming behind him, with a knife.’

  You see Mary creeping, ready.

  ‘Then Hackwill craps out, gets himself an alibi, and leaves his little helper behind to finish the job. You distract James with your kisses, fuck him until he’s in a deep sleep, then go out and kill Warwick and Shearer, knock me over, get back into Castle Drac to be around when James wakes up. You’re great in bed and he trusts you, the idiot. Then, it gets hazy.’

  Her face doesn’t move.

  ‘Somehow, you get turned round. I think it was when I told Jessup about the copse. All the resentment you felt about being Hackwill’s creature bubbled up. You went rogue. Hackwill was out there somewhere, pretending to be lost, nice warm boots on his feet, snacking off emergency rations. You traipsed after Sean, caught up with him, killed him. Collateral damage. You didn’t have to, didn’t want to, but by then killing seemed easy. Certainly, you found and killed Hackwill. And James.’

  The last, you’re not sure of. Hackwill could have killed James, before himself being killed by Mary. James could even still be out there, a Welsh Tarzan living off berries and leaves. At the end, confused by it all, Mary could have felt mercy for James. Couldn’t she?

  You reach into the nest of tubes and take hold.

  If you pull, go to 294. If you let Mary alone, go to 298.

  292

  ‘Thief,’ you say.

  For a moment, you wonder if he can understand English. Voleur. That’s the word.

  ‘You are him,’ Lethem says. ‘The other winner.’

  You knew he knew you were coming.

  He rushes at you — to attack? to embrace? — and you fumble, dropping your ice-axe. You collide, thumping together through layers of fur. You roll through the snow, clinging tight to each other. Snow packs round you, wrapping you in an ice grip. A giant ball grows round you.

  Your fortunes are one. Your matched halves mesh.

  People run after you.

  Rocks tear at your furs but can’t reach you. You have become a two-scoop snowball. Together, you roll over a precipice.

  In each other’s arms, you plunge from the top of the world.

  Go to 0.

  293

  You and Mary lie awake in the four-poster. Tonight, you haven’t made love. You’re too concerned with thinking about the next room.

  James and Hackwill are in there. Will one try to kill the other? James has already tried to kill Hackwill, so Hackwill knows the danger and might plan a pre-emptive strike.

  Mary strokes your chest, understanding.

  ‘I hope he gets it right this time,’ you murmur.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Killing Hackwill. Enough of this fucking around with Warwick and McKinnell. James has to go for the bull.’

  Mary props herself up on her elbow. ‘James didn’t kill McKinnell. That was my job.’

  Your heart clutches.

  ‘I didn’t do it, lover. It was probably Shane.’

  ‘Then James isn’t a killer?’

  Mary looks at you, her face curtained by her hair: you can’t see her eyes.

  Damn. How could you have thought such a thing?

  You get out of bed and go on to the landing. The other bedroom door is open. Hackwill and Shane stand over a bed, pressing a pillow down.

  Hackwill sees you. ‘Fuck being quiet,’ he says.

  Shane falls on you, knife sliding between your ribs. As you die, you regret thinking what you did of James. You don’t wonder whether Mary will be all right.

  Go to 0.

  294

  You wake up in prison, not sure what you were dreaming. Now Mary’s dead, your conclusions are tenuous. Hackwill killed them all except Mary. You killed her.

  While you were away (in a fugue of babbl
ing, apparently) you’ve become a famous case for all the wrong reasons. The assumption is that you mercy-killed your catatonic friend. What you went through together — you must have been in love? — was a bond that brought you to Mary’s bedside, intent on freeing her from her functioning but empty shell.

  You are too bewildered to argue. In a precedent-setting verdict, you get a suspended sentence. Marie-Laure leaves you, certain you betrayed her with Mary. How she managed to miss realising you’d fucked every other woman you took on a course (but not Mary) is beyond you.

  For the rest of your life, whenever you pick up the phone and the other party hangs up, you’re certain it was James. Or Hackwill.

  Or Mary. You don’t think she’s dead. She can’t die. She’s Death Herself.

  In the Arthur C. Clarkeian year of 2001, you receive an e-bomb from a militant anti-euthanasia group. Your computer terminal blows apart, riddling you with glass, plastic and wire shrapnel.

  You don’t linger.

  Go to 0.

  295

  You aren’t your brother. Your arms won’t work. The pillow hovers.

  Hackwill’s eyes flutter open. ‘Mental,’ he sneers.

  A point prods up through the duvet. Hackwill has been sleeping knife in hand. The blade catches you in the soft of your belly, under your ribs. Hackwill twists the knife.

  The pain is like nothing you’ve ever felt. You scream and try to raise yourself off the knife.

  People crowd into the room. Mary, Shane, James, the rest.

  You’re dying in mind-blotting pain.

  ‘He tried to kill me,’ Hackwill says.

  ‘I believe you,’ says Mary, taking his neck and twisting.

  Hackwill dies before you do, but that’s no consolation. James and Mary hold you, getting your blood all over their dressing-gowns and hands.

  You make it through a century of pain until sunrise.

  Go to 0.

  296

  ‘I should thank you, Mental,’ Hackwill says. ‘You and your brother will be remembered as the murderers. Warwick and McKinnell can’t wreck the development deal. The others are out of the way, collateral damage. Rye was wavering. He’d probably have wimped out with Warwick.’

  ‘What about him?’ you say, nodding at Jessup, who is a quivering wreck.

  ‘I don’t think he’ll make it till help comes. I’ll be with him when he dies, though. Friends for life, that’s us.’

  Hackwill is enjoying this. You can’t believe it but he’s doing that stupid Bond-villain thing of explaining it all before killing the hero.

  That makes you a hero. Then again, as he pointed out, he’s a murderer and you’re not. Mary, though. She killed Shane. She’ll do it.

  Does this change how you feel about her?

  ‘And you really were trying to kill me,’ Hackwill says.

  You’re too tired to argue about it.

  ‘Very clever. Get me up here. Have an accident. I almost admire that. But your brother got impatient.’

  You suppose you realised hours ago that James really did push Hackwill into a culvert in the minibus. You’re sad that your brother should be dragged down to Hackwill’s level. You wonder if going to Mary made James do it.

  ‘And all because of that stupid house of yours, and that stupid pint. If your brother had just had a drink on me, we wouldn’t be here knee-deep in dead people.’

  ‘It wasn’t the pint, you stupid fucker,’ Mary says. ‘It was the copse.’

  Mary’s hand closes on his balls. You have hold of his wrist and wrench it back. Mary twists. She gets his knife. She doesn’t go into frenzy, like Jessup. She is calm, detached, meticulous. She takes five minutes to kill Hackwill.

  Watching that kills something else. Your love.

  Hackwill takes the blame for everything. Jessup gives a lengthy confession. Hackwill becomes a bogeyman to rival Nilsen or Fred West. Iain Scobie’s book Hackwill: The Will to Hack, filmed with Alan Rickman as Hackwill, makes him a Manson or Rasputin figure, influencing Shane and Jessup to crimes. His ordinary financial motivations are played down so he can be seen as some kind of monster superman.

  You have nightmares for ever. Hackwill doesn’t haunt you and you rarely dwell on James’s ghastly death. What you remember is Mary killing Hackwill. She knows what she has done. You become formal strangers, meeting only when it’s a legal obligation.

  You marry Marie-Laure, but it doesn’t last. Only the nightmares last.

  And so on.

  Begin again?

  297

  You can’t let it lie. Hackwill’s a multiple murderer. Besides, he was your school bully. Calmly, you and James set out the whole story. The big surprise is that James admits to trying to kill Hackwill in the minibus. His honesty makes the police take you seriously. Then Hackwill accuses you both of attempted murder. The police think again, wondering whether Kay Shearer acted alone. They can understand why he killed Tristram Warwick, but not the others.

  James gets five years.

  You are grilled off and on for weeks. Nothing sticks, except reckless endangerment. Your business is shut down and investigated.

  Everyone who ever twisted their ankle on a course sues you. One day, you wake up and Mary’s gone. You hope she’s hunting Hackwill. But Robert Hackwill gets richer; serves as mayor of Sedgwater; wins Businessman of the Year awards; exults in the grand opening of the Discount Development, grinning in photographs with Tony Blair and the Spice Girls.

  You are sidelined. The worst thing is that you know the whole truth but no one will believe you.

  James is killed in a prison riot.

  You bitterly marry Marie-Laure.

  You make things worse for yourself.

  And so on.

  Begin again?

  298

  Mary’s body lives on but her mind has flown. You feel you’ve a lot in common with her. You feel yourself sinking. Sometimes, you don’t talk for days.

  Then Marie-Laure tells you she’s pregnant. It’s like a rope lowered into a well. You take hold of the fact and haul yourself up. You rebuild a life. You have a son, Jan, then a daughter, Josie. You get on with it.

  In dreams, though, you are back in the copse. Only, it’s not at Ash Grove Primary but up a mountain in Wales.

  Hackwill, Mary, James. They keep beckoning, outstretched hands gloved with boots which bob like comical hand-puppets. There are others with them, in the cobwebbed shadows.

  You always wake up before you go into the copse. If you can, you wake your wife and make love with a desperate urgency, an embracing of life.

  You spend the rest of your life running from the dream-copse.

  And so on.

  Begin again?

  299

  For the rest of your life, you wish you’d gripped the rope tightly. It burns your hands as it passes through them, even through gloves.

  You can’t hear screams in the rain.

  Everyone will say you couldn’t have held them up. You’d just have been pulled down to death with them.

  It’s no comfort.

  And so on.

  Begin again?

  300

  You stay in the hut with Thierry. Apart from Tibet, England, family, friends. You don’t love them any the less but you do not trouble them.

  Your world shrinks to Thierry, the hut, the garden. The money is gone. It means nothing. You wish it well and hope it does some good.

  You work and eat and sleep. Every mouthful of food, every moment of comfort, every second of warmth, has to be earned.

  At last, you live honestly, with love, with bravery, with joy. Always, you are grateful to your brother for making the path, for understanding first. You are amazed at his generosity in welcoming you.

  Alone among the legions of men and women, you understand.

  You are truly fortunate.

  Only now do you understand this.

  Only here do you feel, of all the possible paths you could have taken, that you have really won the Lottery.


  Life’s Lottery.

  Finis

  0

  Begin again...?

  0

  Begin again...?

  0

  Begin again...?

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thanks are due to Pete and Dana Atkins, James Bacon, Sarah Biggs, Anne Billson, Eugene Byrne, Susan Byrne, Pat Cadigan, Jackie Clare, John Clute, Loretta Culbert, Julie Davies, Meg Davis, Alex Dunn, Dennis and Kris Etchison, Martin Feeney, Leslie Felperin, Jo Fletcher, Martin Fletcher, Christopher Fowler, Neil Gaiman, Paula Grainger, Charlie Grant, Antony Harwood, Rob Holdstock, Steve Jones, Rodney Jones, Karen Krizanovich, Chris Manby, Dave Mathew, Paul McAuley, Maura McHugh, Silja Müller, Bryan and Julia Newman, Sasha and Jerome Newman, Marcelle Perks, David Pringle, Geoff Ryman, David Schow, Adam Simon, Helen Simpson, Millie Simpson, Dean Skilton, Mandy Slater, Brian Smedley, Michael Marshall Smith, Graham Watkins, Doug Winter.

  About the Author

  Photo by Maura McHugh

  Kim Newman is a journalist, film critic, and author, co-author, and/or editor of more than two dozen books. He was born in London, raised in Somerset, and studied English at the University of Sussex. He has won the Bram Stoker Award and the International Horror Guild Award, and has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award. Kim is a renowned expert on the fantastic in film and television, and a prolific novelist . His published works include Bad Dreams, The Quorum, Nightmare Movies: A Critical History of the Horror Film since 1968, Ghastly Beyond Belief: The Science Fiction and Fantasy Book of Quotations (with Neil Gaiman), The Bloody Red Baron, and the Anno Dracula series of novels and related short fiction.