by Mark West
“For your part in the Festival of Aerning.” David tried to sit up, but Simon pressed his hand against his shoulder. “You’re the star attraction, my old friend.”
“Get off of me, you fucker.”
Simon smiled then but it was a blank and lifeless expression, dead. “Can’t do that, old friend. You really hurt me, back in the day and it took me a long, long time to get over it enough that I didn’t want to kill you everytime someone mentioned your name. I mean, here we are eight years later and I’m just about able to keep it all together but, I’ll be honest, it’s hard going. So when we were offered the opportunity to live here, in this wonderful little town, where people look out for you and little kids are as safe as it’s possible to be, well, I thought of you.”
Kim came forward, dropping to her knees behind Simon. “I’m sorry, David, but my family comes first.”
“But you said…”
“What else could I say? Of course he knows, David, he knew from the moment we started fucking. It’s taken me a long time to get us back on the level again and I was prepared to pay any price.”
“We both were,” agreed Simon.
“What price?”
“Everything has a price, David and Hoelzli is a bit steeper than most. In order to live here, to partake of this perfect way of life, we have to make the ultimate sacrifice and we talked it over and agreed that we were willing to do it.”
A murmur started up through the crowd, indistinct enough that David couldn’t make out the words.
“Hoelzli has a festival, whenever someone new moves into the village, that has demands.”
David looked at Kim and she nodded. “I told you it was difficult, David. In order to live here, we have to sacrifice a family member.”
David looked between his old friends and watched as Billy came towards him, raising the huge knife and now he could hear the crowd, he could hear that they were chanting Billy’s name and urging him on.
“I’m sorry, David,” said Kim.
“I’m not,” said Simon.
Billy stopped, standing between David’s legs and raised the knife as he undoubtedly been shown how to, high above his head, both hands gripping the shaft, the blade pointed down towards David’s stomach.
“Okay, Billy,” said Simon and the boy obeyed the man who would forever be his dad and not his father.
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Closer Than You Think
by Neil Williams
“What’s wrong with it?” asked Dave looking hurt, though he had fully expected this response.
“You found it in a skip, that’s what’s wrong with it,” Debs answered, making no attempt to hide her disdain. “What is it about men and other people’s rubbish? You were supposed to being going to the tip to get rid of stuff, not bring more back.”
“It’s hardly rubbish; it looks practically new. And you were the one who suggested I get one for my car. This is probably worth eighty quid in the shops.”
“I suggested you buy one. And I didn’t expect you to spend a lot on it.”
“But it didn’t cost a thing and it’s far better than any I would have bought. And look, it’s spotless.”
“You still found it in a skip.”
“I didn’t find it in a skip, I simply noticed that the car that pulled up next to mine was getting rid of it and, as it looked in decent nick, offered to take it off their hands.”
This wasn’t quite how it happened but Dave could see that Debs was in no mood to let it lie.
“Well I still don’t like the idea of using something like this when you don’t know its history,” she said, finally turning her back to him. Even as he watched her walk away he knew he hadn’t won the argument. But, as was usually the case, he thought it best to let her have the last word.
He was still standing by the open front door when a small figure peered out from the living room. Lips that still bore the remnants of breakfast parted as if to speak.
“Don’t you start,” he said.
It had been simply too good to pass up. He had just finished unloading the old mattress from the back of the car and was manhandling it in the direction of the skip marked ‘for items that can’t be recycled’, as the Toyota reversed into the bay beside him. It was one of those large four-wheel drives designed solely, he believed, to cope with the rigours of ferrying children to and from school. He took a step back as the Toyota continued to reverse, effectively blocking his path. He muttered a curse as the vehicle swayed to a halt and waited as the driver, an elegantly dressed woman, stepped out and walked past him. He would have said something to her, but sensed that she was too preoccupied to have even noticed him. Still clutching onto the sagging mattress, he watched her as she opened the back door and took out a pink child’s car seat. In the morning sun it looked almost impossibly bright against the drab surroundings. She carefully placed the seat amongst the debris on the skip and got back into the Toyota.
Dave’s transferred his attention from the woman to the seat. He let the mattress slide away and took a step closer. It looked immaculate, too good to be thrown away. And just what Debs kept saying he needed. He heard the engine start up and looked back to the woman’s car. He could see her face reflected in the wing mirror and for a moment they made eye contact. There was something in her distracted empty expression that he could not interpret. A dullness to the eyes that wasn’t just down to the tinted windows. He gave an involuntary shiver.
Is she watching to see if I’ll take it? Dave thought to himself, again gazing at the pristine treasure placed before him. She’d thrown it out, he reasoned, if he were to take it now there would be nothing anyone could do about it.
Finders, keepers and all that.
He heard the crunch of gravel as the Toyota slowly rolled away. Still he did not act. He looked about to see if anyone else was watching. All he could see were a group of fluorescent-jacketed site-workers sharing a joke while they lounged outside their office on an odd collection of reclaimed furniture. With the vehicle now a respectable distance away and no one else looking he reached into the skip and inspected the seat. He gave it a cursory once over for any damage, but finding none, carefully picked it up and carried it back to his car. From the corner of his eye he saw the Toyota slow and felt the gaze of the driver on him. But it did not stop and it was soon out of sight.
He placed the seat in the boot of the car and was about to close it when he heard a voice call to him.
“Oi, mate! What are you playing at?”
“I’m sorry?” Dave turned to see a surly looking attendant approaching.
“I hope you don’t think you can dump that there?” he said and pointed to the mattress.
“But I don’t like pink anymore!” Katie squirmed in the seat as Dave attempted to feed the seat belt through the guides.
“You do like pink; you’re just trying to be awkward.”
He was starting to lose his patience, having had nothing but grief all morning.
“Well I don’t like this pink and neither does Dolly,” she said waving her rag doll in front of him. He batted it away and finished fastening the belt.
“Stop complaining, you’re almost as bad as your mother.”
He muttered the last part under his breath so Debs, who had just got into the passenger seat, wouldn’t hear. But Katie did.
“Mummy, Daddy says I’m almost as bad as you,” she said, “I’m not that bad, am I?”
Dave looked away so she couldn’t see him smile. He composed himself and gave his daughter the sternest look he could manage and shut the door.
He hadn’t got to the end of the road before Katie had started her ‘Are we there yet’ mantra, accompanied by her banging on the back of Deb’s seat with her feet. Dave was about to speak but it was Debs who beat him to it.
“Katie, will you stop kicking the seat!”
A rhythmic thud, thud continued.
“I won’t tell you again!” Debs warned.
> “It’s not me, it’s Dolly”
“Katie, just do as you’re told for once,” Dave interceded. “Please?”
“But it’s not me.”
“Of course it’s…” he glanced over his shoulder at her. “Shit!”
He pulled the car over, braking as smoothly as possible. Debs twisted round trying to reach her daughter as the car came to a halt.
“What the bloody hell are you playing at?” barked Dave. “You never muck about with your seat belt.”
“But I didn’t”
“Don’t you realise how dangerous that is?”
Debs jumped out of the car and was already at Katie’s side.
“Mummy, it wasn’t me, it just came out.”
Debs clicked the seat belt back in place and checked it was secure. She shot a look at Dave.
“You’re sure you did it properly?”
“You think it was my fault?” he replied
“She knows well enough not to play with the seat belt, it just isn’t like her.”
“Yes, there are lots of things that she isn’t supposed to do, but that doesn’t usually stop her.”
“Are you positive it was properly locked in?”
“Of course I am,” he said.
“Well it must have been Dolly, then,” added Katie.
They both turned to her and said in unison: “Be quiet!”
“You’re not working late are you?”
The voice came from the corridor outside Dave’s office.
Dave was so lost in his own thoughts he started at the sudden intrusion. He turned from the window and gripped onto the back of his chair to steady himself
“No, I’m leaving right now,” he said, and gave the man a weak smile.
“You okay?”
“Just tired, it’s been a long week,” he said
“Well, have a good weekend; see you Monday.”
“Yeah, you too,” he said, almost to himself. He was already looking out of the window again at the office car park below. A slate-grey rectangle was slowly revealed as cars left their bays to join the Friday commute home, moving like pieces in some unfathomable board game. His gaze fell onto his own vehicle. Though partially obscured by a thin line of trees that flanked the entrance to the office block, he could see the blue metallic gleam of the roof, while across the windscreen and nearside doors the reflected foliage danced in a light breeze. Amidst the flurry of green something small and pale opened out like a flower in the rear passenger window.
It looked like the palm of a hand pressing against the glass.
He took a step back from his office window, drew his breath to regain some composure and looked again. The hand was gone; all he could see now was the reflected rustling leaves and beyond it only a salmon flush of the car seat through the tinted glass.
Was it a trick of the light, the reflection of a bird fluttering amongst the branches? There had to be a rational explanation for it, he kept on telling himself.
But he’d been doing that for nearly a week now.
It had started with a feeling that he was being observed. He’d spent the previous ten minutes caught in the usual bumper-to-bumper crawl into the city that distinguished every Monday - traffic accidents allowing - from the rest of the week. Monday was the day everyone seemed to join the slow procession from the suburbs. But unlike so many others he rather enjoyed the solitude that the journey offered him. He found it odd that, in his little metal and glass box, he could feel so removed from society. That even surrounded by others in the same situation he felt completely apart from them.
But on that day things had been different. Something had intruded into his private world. He found his attention increasingly drawn to the rear view mirror. He found nothing there, but whenever he looked away it felt as though he were being watched closely. He twisted the mirror down so he had a view of the back seat. The empty child seat was all he found there; a brash intrusion on the usually subdued interior of the car. It was plausible that the seat was distraction enough. Wherever he looked the bright fabric seemed to loom into his peripheral vision.
Then there was the sound. It hadn’t been there before. Either that, or he hadn’t heard it over the blare of music. Here was the one place he could listen to his kind of music without the constant complaints he’d get at home to turn it down. Occasionally, when slowing to a stop, he detected a thumping sound. It would start quietly at first, barely audible over the music but it would soon become louder and more insistent. Impatient was the word that came to him whenever he heard it. The cause could only be mechanical, but it reminded him of Katie’s annoying habit of kicking the seat in front of her when waiting for the traffic lights to change. The car was due a service soon; he would mention it then. Meanwhile, he did what he usually did in such circumstances and cranked up the volume until the problem could no longer be heard.
The sound of his mobile ringing brought him back into the present. Debs had changed the ring-tone to a soothing classical piece of music after he’d complained that the previous one always made him anxious when it rang. So now he just got anxious whenever he heard violins.
“Hello,” he said, sounding more irritable than he intended. “Yes, I’m just leaving now... I’ll call in on the way home ... red or white?”
As Dave walked from the office building across the half-empty car park, he felt a strange sense of déjà vu. Earlier that day he’d come down expecting to find his car broken into. He’d glanced from his office window and saw something moving inside it. He came marching down, brandishing his car key like a weapon, only to find the vehicle still locked and empty. After that, the sensation of being watched seemed to have followed him beyond the confines of the vehicle, so that whenever he looked down onto the car park, he felt the same uneasiness rise within him, suffocating his normally rational mind.
And now, here he was approaching his vehicle with the same trepidation as before. And once again everything was as it should be. Only one thing caused him to hesitate. On the rear nearside window he noticed a greasy smear that might have been from a hand being placed there, but it was too indistinct, and he had no way of knowing how long it had been there. He finally unlocked the door, got in and started the engine. All the while he kept looking, listening. Waiting for something to manifest itself.
Dave wandered, basket in hand, towards the Wines section of the supermarket. It was still light outside, but the interior of the store appeared so much brighter and the effect was initially overwhelming, disorientating. Through the tinted-glass windows the car park outside was reduced to an uninviting slate-grey twilight; even on the brightest days it was the same. It was all part of the psychology of retail.
He picked a path through the other shoppers, dodging the slow waltzing trolleys of the elderly or those of harried mothers whose offspring wheeled blindly about them like flame entranced moths.
The wine aisle was divided into country of origin, though this was not something that usually affected his choice. It was always price first, then alcoholic content (nothing too high or too low) and finally if he liked the look of the label. Anything that looked too modern was immediately dismissed; he always went for the ones with a crest or an engraving of an old town or, if he wanted something really special, he’d pick out one that bore a simple serif typeface. Assuming the price was right, of course.
It was as he stepped aside to allow an elderly couple a closer view of the wine in front of him that he heard the announcement over the speaker system. He was struggling to read the small-print on a rather promising looking bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon when something in the broadcast message seemed to tug at the periphery of his concentration.
That was his car they just mentioned, wasn’t it?
He listened again, more intently now as the message was repeated. It sounded different, more insistent; the voice didn’t possess the bored monotone delivery that he’d become so used to hearing.
“Would the driver of the blue KIA Cee’d, registration...�
�
He looked up, searching for the source of the sound and, on hearing the voice relay his own registration plate, started briskly for the information desk. Either someone had bumped into the car or... what else? They surely wouldn’t be going to all this trouble because he’d parked in a parent and child space.
Dave approached the desk and tried to attract the attention of the woman who was dealing with another customer. He placed the wine and basket he was carrying on the counter as she stared at him over her spectacles. She did not look likely to welcome his imminent interruption.
“Excuse me,” he said, “but you’ve asked me to come here.”
Her expression seemed only to harden to one of outright hostility.
“It’s about my car,” said Dave, thinking she’d missed something. “Has something happened to it?”
She gestured to another member of staff with a ballpoint. “Here, this is the one”
Dave watched as another officious-looking woman with a security guard in tow advanced towards him. He turned back to face the first woman; starting to think that they really did take parking in the wrong spot seriously.
“You do realise how dangerous it is to leave a small child alone in a car, don’t you, Sir?”
“Child, what child?” he replied. “I think you’ve made a mistake, I realised I parked where I shouldn’t have, but...”
“Sir, if you would just wait a moment,” called the approaching Assistant Manager as Dave backed away from the desk and turned for the exit. Was he really going to make a run for it? He felt the now-familiar chill creep over him and increased his pace, aware that he was attracting the attention of other staff and shoppers. The last thing he wanted was some have-a-go hero taking him to task.
As he came through the final set of doors he hesitated, the certainty in his mind dissipating as he returned to the fading light of evening. He could see his car clearly from where he stood. The only other vehicle between him and it was already reversing out of its bay as he stepped out of the store. Though the tinted windows rendered the interior dark he could see well enough. In the rear, the pink of the child seat appeared like sandstone. There could be no mistaking a thick plait of dark hair and beneath it the sallow face of the figure seated within. So it wasn’t just his imagination, he thought, his heart hammering in his chest. Not if someone else had seen this as well.
