The Beast

by Barry Hutchison

  ‘What’s it doing?’ I asked, my voice a whisper, as if whoever was in the police car might hear me.

  Before Ameena answered, the driver’s door opened and a woman in a police uniform stepped out. From here she looked young – mid-twenties, maybe – but it was hard to tell for sure.

  She glanced along the street and up at my house. I pulled back, expecting her to look our way, but she didn’t. Instead she walked around to the other side of the car and opened the rear door. I almost cried out as a familiar head of grey hair bobbed up into view.

  ‘Nan!’ I said, wishing I could bang on the glass, wishing I could run to her. ‘It’s my nan!’

  Ameena didn’t reply. I tore my eyes away from Nan long enough to see the worry on Ameena’s face. Only then did the first stirrings of panic begin.

  ‘Why’s Nan here?’ I wondered aloud. ‘Why would they bring her to the house?’

  ‘Maybe she’s picking something up for your mum.’

  ‘At this time of night?’

  ‘Maybe it’s something she really needs.’

  ‘But why send Nan? She doesn’t know where things are. She can barely think straight these days.’ It was true. Dementia had been devouring Nan’s memories for years now. Sometimes she didn’t recognise any of us, herself included.

  ‘Maybe...’ Ameena began, but nothing followed it. She was all out of maybes.

  The policewoman let Nan take her arm. I watched them shuffle slowly up the path. It was the policewoman who unlocked the door. I kept watching until they both disappeared inside.

  ‘What if something’s happened to Mum?’ I asked, feeling the panic rise up into my throat. ‘What if they’ve come to sort out all her stuff ? What if she’s...’

  ‘They’ve left the lights going,’ Ameena said, cutting me short. I looked down at the car. Sure enough, the blue light was still flashing and the beams of the headlamps still cut through the gloom. ‘They can’t plan on staying long.’

  ‘Why’s it flashing?’ I asked. ‘I thought that was just for emergencies.’

  Ameena shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me.’

  We didn’t speak again for a while, just watched for Nan and the policewoman emerging. Eventually, we got tired of standing and sat on the floor, taking it in turns to raise up on to our knees and look over at the house. Lights had come on in all the rooms, but other than that, there had been nothing to report.

  ‘How long’s that been?’ I asked.

  ‘About an hour,’ Ameena said. ‘Give or take ten minutes.’

  I looked at the car, its lights still burning. ‘Her battery’s going to go flat if she doesn’t get a move on.’

  Ameena yawned. ‘Mine too.’ She lay down on her side, propping her head up on her hand. ‘Think I’m going to get some rest. You should too.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, forcing my heavy eyelids open to prove my point. ‘I’m going to keep watching.’

  ‘Wake me up if anything happens,’ she answered, rolling on to her back and interlocking her fingers behind her head. ‘Hey, cool,’ she said, looking past me, up towards the cloudy night sky. ‘It’s snowing.’

  I raised my eyes in time to see a tiny white dot drift by on the other side of the glass. Another fell a moment later, then another, and another. In just a few minutes, the sky was filled with a hundred thousand falling flakes.

  ‘It’s heavy too,’ I said, but Ameena’s only reply was a soft snore. ‘No stamina,’ I muttered, then I yawned, rested my chin on the windowsill, and settled in for a long, lonely stakeout.

  I woke up with my forehead against the cold glass and soft January sunlight in my eyes. Several centimetres of snow were piled up on the window ledge, so white it was almost glowing.

  ‘Crap!’ I cursed. I tried to stand up but my legs were numb from being folded beneath me and I quickly fell back down again.

  ‘What? What’s wrong?’ Ameena asked, wide awake and on her feet before she’d finished speaking.

  ‘I fell asleep,’ I explained, furious with myself. ‘I missed them coming out!’

  ‘Um... no you didn’t.’

  I looked down at the front of my house. The police car was still there. Its headlamps were dim and the blue light had been covered by the snow that continued to fall. The car hadn’t moved all night.

  ‘That’s weird,’ I said. I looked to Ameena for reassurance. ‘That’s weird, right?’

  She nodded. ‘That is definitely weird.’

  The lights were still on in the house. I studied all the windows in turn, trying to make out any movement within them. Nothing. As far as I could see, the house was completely still.

  ‘Why would they still be there?’ I asked, not really expecting an answer. ‘It’s been hours. They should’ve come out long before now.’

  ‘Kyle.’ Ameena spoke the word quietly, but I couldn’t miss the tremble in her voice.

  ‘What?’

  She didn’t reply, just nodded towards the back garden. Towards the streaks of dark red that coloured the snow.

  I was out of the room in a heartbeat, bounding down into the darkness at the bottom of the stairs. The electricity tingled across my scalp, and this time I didn’t resist. I imagined the board being torn from the front door, pictured the wood and the rusty nails being yanked sharply away.

  The board gave a crack and fell outwards as I approached and a dim, watery light seeped in. I hurried outside and found myself stumbling, knee-deep, through snow. I hesitated, just for a moment, wondering how this much of the stuff could possibly have fallen in one night, but then I was running again, heading for the fence, no longer worried about being seen.

  Ameena crunched along behind me, struggling to keep up. The snow slowed me down, but I reached the fence in no time and vaulted over it.

  I plopped down into the marshmallow whiteness of my garden, staggered forwards, then set off running again, making for the back door. The snow was falling heavily, making it hard to see more than a few metres in any direction. I was running through the red streaks almost before I saw them. Their slick wetness sparkled atop the snow, slowly taking on a pinkish hue as more flakes fell.

  I looked up, blinking against the blizzard, and saw the back door stood ajar. Not bothering to wait for Ameena, I crunched up the stone steps, through the open door, and into a blood-soaked warzone that had once been my kitchen.

  an? Nan?’

  I raced through the kitchen, past the upturned table and the broken chairs, past the blood-spattered cabinets and the shattered glass.

  ‘Good grief !’ Ameena muttered, appearing at the back door just as I charged through into the living room.

  ‘Nan, where are you?’ I called. My voice was absorbed by the silence of the house. The living room was a mess, but not in the same league as the kitchen. The coffee table was in pieces and the TV was face down on the carpet, but there was no blood. No Nan, either.

  I made for the stairs, then pulled myself together enough to collect one of the legs of the broken coffee table. It was a short piece of wood – about forty-five centimetres from top to bottom – but it was thick and it was heavy and I’d be able to do some damage with it if I had to.

  ‘Any sign of her?’ Ameena asked, joining me at the bottom of the stairs. She’d had the same idea as me, and now carried a knife she’d lifted from the wooden block in the kitchen. She held it with the blade flat against her wrist, half-concealed, but ready to strike.

  ‘Not yet,’ I said. I called up the stairs. ‘Nan? Nan, are you up there?’

  A groan. A whimper. Faint, but there. I was halfway up the stairs when I heard it again, three-quarters of the way before I realised it had come from the living room.

  I turned, bounded back down half a dozen steps, and that’s when I realised I had been wrong. There was blood in the living room. So much blood.

  It started on the wall just by the kitchen door, a metre and a half off the ground, and streaked straight upwards – a thick smear of it in one continuous line across the ceili
ng.

  The trail stopped almost exactly above the couch. The whimper came again and I took the last of the stairs in a single leap. Ameena was already pulling the couch aside. I saw the police uniform before I was halfway there.

  She lay on her back, her hands on her belly, one eye wide open, one battered shut. Blood pumped through her fingers, ran down her arms, seeped into the carpet, drip, drip, drip. Half of her face was a swollen mess of purple and black. Her one open eye stared upwards, but not at the ceiling, at something beyond the ceiling that only she could see.

  Her breathing came in shallow gasps, two or three a second, in-out, in-out, in-out.

  ‘What do we do?’ Ameena asked.

  ‘Call an ambulance.’

  ‘What? But... they’ll bring more cops. You’ll get—’

  ‘Call an ambulance!’ I shouted. ‘She’s dying!’

  There was a moment’s hesitation, and for just a fraction of a second I thought she was going to refuse. But then she was clambering over the couch, reaching for the sideboard, picking up the phone.

  I knelt down by the policewoman, wishing I knew how to help her. Her eye was bulging, the pupil fully dilated so there was no colour left, just a circle of black. I had been right last night – she was young. Late twenties at the most.

  ‘It’s dead.’

  I looked up. Ameena was standing over us, the phone in her hand. ‘No dial tone. Weather, maybe?’

  Maybe.

  Maybe not.

  I touched one of the policewoman’s hands, meaning to move it aside so I could see how badly she was hurt – as if the pints of blood painting the inside of the house weren’t enough of a clue.

  The moment my fingers touched hers, though, she grabbed my hand and squeezed it tight, clinging to it as if it was the only thing anchoring her to life. I didn’t pull away, just held on to her and let her hold on to me. I wanted to ask her what had happened and where Nan was, but I knew I’d get no answer.

  Instead I said the only thing I could think of. A lie. ‘It’s OK. You’re going to be OK.’

  I watched a single tear form in her open eye. It trickled sideways, meandering across her temple and over her ear. By the time it dripped on to the carpet, her hand no longer gripped on to mine. I carefully rested it back on her stomach, closed over her eye, and stood up.

  ‘Someone else dead,’ I said, after a long silence, ‘because of me.’

  I hated the matter-of-fact tone of my voice. Hated the fact I wasn’t shaking or crying or screaming about the woman’s death. The cold fact of it was, I’d seen worse.

  ‘You don’t know that, kiddo.’

  But we both knew I was right.

  It was happening again. Someone – or something – had come looking for me, and another innocent person had found themselves caught in the crossfire.

  I took hold of the table leg again, tightening my grip until my knuckles shone white. I set my jaw, clenching my teeth together. Someone else dead. Because of me.

  The stairs passed in a haze. I was at the top before I realised I’d moved. The lights were on up here, all four doors open. I looked in my bedroom, in my wardrobe, under my bed. Nothing there, so I moved on, no longer interested in a trip down Memory Lane. I needed to find Nan and I wanted to find whoever had killed the policewoman. Nothing else mattered.

  Nan’s old room, empty. Bathroom, empty. No damage to either and no blood stains on the walls. I turned to the last door and that’s when I did hesitate, taking a second to compose myself before stepping inside Mum’s bedroom.

  Her bed was unmade. It must’ve been that way since the morning she’d sent me to stay with Marion. The morning she’d been attacked by the Crowmaster, beaten so badly she was still in a coma. And all because of me.

  Her dressing gown lay across the duvet. She’d worn it when she’d talked to me about going away – an all-night conversation in which I’d done nothing but whinge and complain. If she didn’t pull through, that would be the last proper talk we ever had. I pushed the thought from my mind. She’d pull through. She had to.

  ‘Any sign?’

  I turned to find Ameena in the upstairs hallway, knife held ready. ‘Nothing,’ I said, and she lowered the blade to her side. ‘No one’s here.’

  ‘Great,’ she said, sighing. ‘What now?’

  ‘We go outside,’ I said. ‘We look for her. We find her. We’ve got to find her.’

  Ameena’s hand was on my shoulder. ‘We will. She’ll be OK.’

  OK. Like the policewoman was OK.

  ‘But we’d better wrap up,’ Ameena continued. ‘Or we’ll freeze in that snow.’

  ‘We’ll grab coats from the cupboard downstairs,’ I said, turning from Mum’s room and striding along the landing. ‘There should be one about your—’

  THUD.

  The sound came from the living room. It was a single low knock; the sound of something heavy hitting something solid.

  Ameena had the knife raised in an instant, the other hand on my chest, holding me behind her. But I was beyond that now. For too long I’d relied on Ameena to protect me, when really it should’ve been the other way round.

  I pushed her hand aside, more forcefully than I meant to, and crossed to the stairs. I may have been desperate to find Nan, but I wasn’t stupid, and didn’t rush straight down to the living room. After creeping down a couple of the stairs, I squatted down and looked through the gaps in the wooden banister.

  Nothing moved in the room below. I tiptoed further down, feeling Ameena close behind me.

  I should’ve been watching out for trouble, but as I reached the bottom of the stairs my eyes were fixed on only one spot. A patch of carpet, stained with blood. A patch that should’ve been covered by the policewoman’s body.

  ‘Where’d she go?’ I muttered, finally looking around. The living room appeared to be exactly as we’d left it, minus one fresh corpse.

  ‘Maybe she got better,’ Ameena suggested.

  ‘What, better than “dead”?’

  ‘Well, you can’t exactly get much worse.’

  I stepped further into the room, ready to swing with the table leg. ‘Someone took her,’ I said. ‘Someone came in and took her.’

  There was silence in the living room then, broken finally by Ameena asking the question that was bothering us both.

  ‘Why would someone do that?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And who would do it?’

  ‘Whoever killed her,’ I said.

  ‘Nah. They’d have just taken her at the time, surely?’

  I dug my fingernails into my palms. ‘Not if they were already carrying somebody else.’

  It took a moment for what I was saying to sink in, then: ‘Oh.’

  Nan. Had whoever took the policewoman’s body already taken Nan? Just the idea of it made my heart race and my legs spring into action. I ran through to the ruined kitchen and hurled myself through the back door, out into the swirling snowstorm.

  ‘Nan!’ I shouted, but the falling flakes seemed to absorb most of the sound. I staggered along the path and out through the open back gate, wading knee-deep through snow that was now only faintly tinged with pink. ‘Nan, where are you?’

  ‘Kyle, come back!’ Ameena’s shout was a whisper in the distance. I blundered on, along the back of my row of houses, shouting for Nan the whole way.

  The cold gripped my legs up to the knees as I forced my way on. My hands were raised in front of me, shielding my eyes from the driving snow. My village gets its fair share of snow in the winter, but this was like nothing I’d ever seen before. It was too severe, too sudden to be natural. Something had to be causing it. Great. Another thing for me to worry about. Always one more thing.

  I emerged from behind the houses into the street. The snow covered the few cars here like a thick white fur. Normally I’d be able to see my front garden, but the blizzard made it impossible to see more than a few metres in any direction.

  The houses around me were in dar
kness, but the streetlights were on. For all the difference they made. It might have been early morning, but barely a glimmer of sunlight was making it through the snowstorm. I stood in the pool of light cast by one of the street lamps, making myself as visible as I could.

  ‘Nan!’ I cried. ‘I’m here! Where are you?’

  A hand caught me roughly by the shoulder and spun me around. I found myself looking into Ameena’s scowling face. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded.

  ‘I was—’

  ‘Being an idiot?’

  ‘No! I was—’

  ‘On a suicide mission?’

  ‘What? No!’

  ‘Well, what then?’ she snapped. ‘Because, from what I can see, you’re freezing to death, standing in plain sight and making a racket that’s going to draw the attention of everyone in town.’ She stepped out of the pool of light, dragging me with her. ‘Not to mention the attention of whatever killed that cop.’

  ‘I have to find Nan,’ I told her.

  ‘I know. But here’s a suggestion – don’t get violently killed before you do. Stealth, kiddo. Stealth.’

  I thought about the policewoman, and about the blood on the ceiling and walls. ‘OK,’ I said quietly. ‘Point made.’

  ‘Good,’ she said, giving me a gentle punch on the shoulder. ‘Now, come on, let’s go get warmed up then we’ll figure out what to do.’ She began trudging up the street towards my front garden, glancing at the houses on either side of the road as we walked. ‘It’s just a miracle no one heard you and came out to see what the ruckus was about.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, only half-listening. ‘A miracle.’

  ‘Didn’t even see a light come on,’ she continued. ‘Must all be deaf, the noise you were making.’

  ‘Deaf,’ I agreed, trudging along behind her. ‘Yeah.’

  I stopped walking.

  ‘Wait,’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  I looked across at the other side of the street, where I could just make out the darkened outlines of six houses.

  ‘Why’ve we stopped?’ Ameena was asking. I didn’t answer.

  The houses on this side of the street were in darkness too. Now that we were closer, I could make out the lights we’d left on in my house, but they were the only ones on in the entire block.