Seven Deadly Sins

by K D Grace

  He stared at the mental signpost in his head telling him to go down the road of what was and visit Memory Central, a city full of regrets and more I-shouldn’t-have-been-there. Well, that wasn’t strictly true, was it? He should have been there, just not there, where he’d been when he’d turned in the darkness of that alley, confronted by the bright, evil glare of a flashlight beam pointing in his face.

  They were silhouettes, those men, the two who had stood behind that light. The entry to the alley at their rear only allowed scant illumination, a fuzzy amber glow courtesy of streetlamps. A backdrop of an archway, the smudged impression of houses. A black car, only the roof visible, a puddle of that orange light on top, its edges fading, but not enough that the silver rim of the side window didn’t sparkle a bit.

  Funny how he remembered small shit like that.

  He’d sucked in a breath, the air cold at the back of his throat, drying it out until he swallowed — swallowed a knot of fear that went down his windpipe and settled in his belly, a heavy load he shouldn’t have had to bear.

  A hand had appeared in that shaft of torchlight, leather-gloved, claw-fingered. It had stretched towards him on the end of an arm that seemed to go on forever; didn’t seem to be attached to a body. But it was, of course it was, and he was hauled away, down the alley. Out into the street. Put in a car, that looming hand on his head, pressing him into the back seat.

  How the fuck the charges had stuck against him he didn’t know. Amazing what cops could fabricate when they had a mind. His fingerprints were there, as were long lengths of his wavy black hair. But that was a given — he’d lived in the damn cottage.

  The room they’d interrogated him in was grey — everything appeared to be grey, even the bare ceiling bulb. Their suits. Their skin.

  “Someone saw you leave, Kevin — someone driving past. Exact time to put you there for the murder. What have you got to say about that?”

  He’d said plenty, not that it had made a blind bit of difference. They had him, they’d said, and he wasn’t going anywhere except the inside of a prison cell.

  And here he was, but tomorrow... Tomorrow was the start of his new life. Twenty years down the shitter. Twenty years of missing Robin and knowing he’d never see him again. Twenty years to find out who the bastard was, the one who had really killed him — killed them both. He’d kept his mouth shut when he’d been told, then clamped it once he’d got confirmation from another inmate. Took the shit, the blame, put his head down. Was approached by one man too many for one too many things.

  Sex. The promise of a good fuck in the shower, the men leering as though it would be an ordeal, like he’d never had a cock up his ass before. Dicks in his mouth. Didn’t tell them he enjoyed it to some degree, did he, that if he wasn’t in a relationship with Robin he’d have let them do him without protest.

  Except he wasn’t in a relationship with Robin. Only in his head.

  The first time, shit, he’d protested all right. Fought and slid all over the goddamn place trying to get away. Pointless, though. Kevin soon worked out that if he let them know they hurt him they’d fuck him harder, punish him harder, and when he thought about it, giving them what they wanted should have made them happier. So he just let them get on with it, thinking they’d piss off and bother someone else.

  They hadn’t.

  Violence. Those who knew which way he swung, those who didn’t want a piece of his ass, offered to cave his head in, give him a brand-new, wider smile, a skewed nose and lungs that protested every time a damn broken rib jabbed into them. He’d fought back over that at first too. Until he realised they enjoyed the fight. No fun in beating the crap out of someone who lets you get on with it, is there? At least that’s what he’d thought.

  He was wrong.

  Fucking assholes.

  Kevin was out in a few hours. He’d love to be able to say he’d see Robin again, be able to hold his hand without a guard shouting “Hands off!” like they had when his brother came to visit and reached out to curl his fingers around Kevin’s forearm. He’d love to be able to have Robin’s cock instead of several others. One that didn’t sink inside without him being primed first. One that didn’t sting and stretch, make him turn in on himself and hide.

  It was going to be weird out there. Getting used to being free again. Nothing regimented; he could come and go as he pleased. No looking over his shoulder. Except...that last bit wasn’t true. With what he planned to do, he might well be looking over his shoulder for a good while to come. Out there or back in here.

  He wouldn’t know until the shit hit the fan.

  Kevin hadn’t thought people picked up hitchhikers anymore but they did. He’d stood outside that god-awful place with Dave, someone he’d come to think of as a friend. Sort of. They’d hadn’t spoken an awful lot, just sat beside one another on outside breaks, shit like that. Dave had been the one to find out who had killed Robin, and, outside in the free air just five minutes ago, Kevin had promised he’d pay him back for that information one day.

  “No need,” Dave had said. “It’s me who owes you. Kept me sane in there for the most part, you did. I’ll pay you back, you’ll see.”

  They’d parted ways with a handshake and no promise to meet up again, Dave going left to the nearest town and Kevin going right, beginning the long walk on the main road leading back to the city, thumb out, legs unused to such exercise. Yeah, he’d walked around the prison yard with Dave, did a bit of pumping in the gym, but it wasn’t the same as a big trek, was it?

  The sky-blue estate car had stopped beside him, and he was surprised to see it was a woman. Car seats in the back, for a toddler and a baby, he reckoned. He wasn’t sure whether to get in with her or not, it being obvious he’d just been let out. His ancient clothes gave him away, well out of fashion, the jeans all baggy and bleach-washed, t-shirt splashed with a Metallica print. And his short haircut didn’t help, or the scars on his hands where he’d grappled once with an inmate who’d favoured the blade.

  Still, she must have sensed he was all right, because he sat beside her now, in a low-slung passenger seat — low-slung from being knackered, not by design — belt buckled as she’d instructed when he hadn’t bothered drawing it across his body.

  “You have to wear them,” she’d said. “It’s the law.”

  Yeah, he’d known that, had read it years ago in a newspaper, hadn’t he, but old habits died hard.

  “So you’re heading for the cottage up the road here a bit?” she asked now, glancing at him briefly then returning her attention to the road.

  If he was that way inclined he might have fancied her, what with her long black hair, lit blue by the sunrays streaming through her side window.

  He thought of another side window, another kind of light, and shuddered.

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “Yeah, going back home.”

  “Far as I know, place hasn’t been used for donkey’s years. Looks a bit fucked, pardon my language.”

  Like me, then. Except I’ve been used.

  She was around thirty, he guessed, about ten years younger than him, give or take a couple either way. He wondered if she had a husband, a life worth living with the kids that undoubtedly filled those car seats back there. She didn’t look weary, didn’t look as though she had any troubles, like her family wore her down, but then people had a good way of hiding things, didn’t they?

  “Yeah?” he said. “I’ll soon have it back into shape.” Doing that meant he’d have to get a job, and if he didn’t manage that, he’d grab whatever cash-in-hand work he could from whoever would take on an ex-crim.

  “It’s yours?” she asked. “Like, you own it?”

  “I do now, yeah.”

  It had been Robin’s. The letter announcing it now belonged to him had come three years after Kevin had been banged up, and fuck, he’d cried that day. Most of the day and into the night until the sun
slithered through his shitty little dust-speckled window and he’d gotten a hold of himself. He’d known the other men would spot the puffiness of his eyes come morning, home in on him as vulnerable, and they had. He’d shrugged, no fight or life left in him, and wished they’d do him over so he could go and see Robin again.

  “It’ll be lovely once it’s all done up,” she said. “I’ve always wondered what it’d look like with a lick of paint and a new front door. The garden all pretty and tidy.”

  She let out a quiet laugh. Like she thought she’d sounded stupid.

  Kevin didn’t think so. She’d sounded wistful, as though it was a dream of hers to renovate a house. If he didn’t need it so damn badly as a place to stay he’d let her have it, but with no other bolthole to claim as his own, he was stuck with it.

  Set a way back from the road, it came into view — or the slate roof did anyway — the rest obscured by overgrown bushes and trees. Once they rounded that bend up ahead he’d see more of it, but this tiny glimpse was just about enough for the time being. There was only so much a body could take all at once.

  Shit, those conifers had been babies when he’d last seen them. He and Robin had planted them together, thinking that they’d watch them grow over the years. Now the trees stretched up to the eaves, a regimented line down one side of the cottage that might well prove a problem, what with their roots and all. Neither of them had gotten to see the firs grow.

  His stomach bunched, and a lump swelled in his throat. He grimaced. Last thing he needed was to break down, here, in front of this woman.

  They rode for a while, around the bend and onto a straight run, and he took the cottage in again from a different angle. It was smaller than he remembered — and it would be, only two bedrooms, see — and he realised he’d bigged it up in his mind. Maybe as something to hold on to, get him through those long days that had stretched ahead. If he made it large as life when he thought about it, those imaginings would eclipse all others. More sinister, frightening ones.

  She drew up in front of the property, on the weed-riddled mouth of the gravel drive, and kept the engine idling. He knew he should get out, let her go along her way, but he couldn’t move. He stared at the cottage, the outer walls no longer white but a pasty grey — like that damn interrogation room — dark, damp stains creeping a few inches from the ground up and stopping abruptly, as though they’d got tired of all that creeping. The windows were like the one in his cell, unable to see through they were that dirty. Bushes lined the front just under the living room window and reached out their green arms, branches that looked thick and strong from where he was sitting.

  They’d been thin and fragile before.

  How much things had changed in twenty years.

  “Anyone live there?” she asked. “I mean, anyone here to welcome you back?”

  “No,” he said quietly. Only ghosts.

  “That’s a shame. You know, after being where you’ve been...”

  He wrenched his gaze from the cottage then, looked at her in a new light. She’d known when she’d picked him up where he’d come from. Didn’t let it bother her. She was brave, he’d give her that much.

  “You shouldn’t pick up people like me,” he said. “Never know who you’re going to get.”

  “I don’t usually.” She lifted one hand from the steering wheel to tuck a stray tress behind her ear. “But you look and seem harmless enough.”

  He gave her a weak smile. Almost laughed at the irony of what she’d said. Yeah, he was harmless now, but not for long.

  “Well, thanks for the lift,” he said, getting out then bending down to stare at her through the open door. “Nice life to you.”

  “Same to you.”

  She gave a slow nod, and he closed the door, stood there to watch her drive away until her car resembled nothing but a fleck on the cityscape horizon. He’d have to go into that city soon, to do what he’d planned, but it’d have to wait. He needed to check whether Robin’s car was still here, whether the damn cottage key was even sitting under the big fake rock out the back. Whether, once he’d been inside, assaulted with more memories, he’d have the strength to go out again.

  Kevin sighed and steeled himself to walk up the driveway. It wasn’t that long, maybe an eighth of a mile, but now he was here he wished it was longer. Maybe if he walked slowly that would do the trick. Delaying the inevitable wasn’t going to do him much good in the long run, but it’d serve its purpose for now. He took a step, faltered, then coached himself to keep going, to look at the scenery and not the cottage.

  The grass either side of the drive reached to his waist — he’d have a devil of a time getting that cut by himself — and thistles grew stout-stemmed among the dried-out grass stalks. Looked more like hay, really, complete with those wispy heads on top. A light breeze shuffled it, and it whispered, words he didn’t want to hear. That Robin wasn’t here, that he was on his own now, son, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. Still, he pressed on, shoving those thoughts away and keeping his gaze lowered until he couldn’t do so any longer. The cottage was there, right in front of him, an empty shell fit for an empty man.

  He walked around the back, the grass and thistles coming to life, grasping at his calves, thorns snagging on his jeans. He tugged his legs and stumbled forward, the ground mulchy and uneven beneath his trainers. At the back door, weathered so the vibrant red it had once been was now a sickly pink, he noticed how it was shedding its paint, revealing the grey of bare wood beneath.

  Everything was always so grey.

  He stooped and made to shift the fake rock, but it was stuck like a son of a bitch. He supposed it would be, not being moved for twenty years, so he put more effort into it and gave it a good wrench. It came free of its bed, the size and weight of it pushing him backwards onto his ass. He stared at the mud, seeing the key sitting there amidst worms struggling to dive back into the earth, away from the light he’d so crudely impressed upon them. Woodlice scurried into cracks in the wall, and an ugly dark brown centipede slithered over the earth to find another rock to live under.

  I could do with living under a damn rock.

  Kevin pushed himself to his knees and took hold of the key, scratching away with his thumbnail the dirt that stubbornly clung to the ridges. He stood and returned to the front of the cottage, another fight with the grass on the way. On the doorstep, once terracotta-coloured tiles laid by Robin the summer he’d got sunburned on his neck and almost fainted, but now a nondescript shade, he took a deep breath and counted to ten. Inserted the key in the lock. Waited before he turned it and pushed the door wide. He needed a minute.

  Just a minute.

  Chapter Two

  ♦♦♦♦

  Kevin had expected the interior to look as bad as the exterior but he’d been wrong. He’d imagined thick layers of dust, the air to be dank and cloying. Rats or maybe mice scurrying about when he entered. No, it was nothing like that. Although the windows were dirty, the rest of the place was clean, as though someone came along regularly to keep the place tidy. Or had come out here especially to make sure it was aired out and whatnot for his return. The only person who would have done that was his brother, and he was long gone, having died a couple of years ago.

  He closed the door and stared around the living room, taking in the fact that everything was in the same place as he’d last seen it. The brown-and-cream hessian couch. The mahogany sideboard. The scratched teak coffee table — minus the newspapers and magazines on the slatted shelf beneath, though, but still covered in tea stain rings, burned deep where the varnish had been wearing thin even back then. They’d picked the table up at some car boot sale or other — the one in Levitt’s Field if he remembered right — and lugged it into the house, reckoning they’d got a right bargain. And they had. For fifty pence, that table had done the job. On the day he’d been killed, Robin had said just that morning he was goin
g to strip it later, make it look like new. A circular scrubbing where there was no varnish shouted loud and clear he’d started the job but hadn’t been able to finish it. Must have started it when Kevin had left to go into the city and pick up some food from the Chinese restaurant. The one at the other end of that alley.

  Kevin swallowed. Shifted from foot to foot. Cursed the sting of tears.

  Just what the fuck was he doing back here, eh?

  Trying to move on, that’s what.

  He sighed and scoured some more of the cottage, seeing stuff, noticing how everything was the damn same, the cottage remaining stuck in time, as though it’d been preserved just for this day. So Kevin’s memories matched the reality of now. In the kitchen, though, a cup sat on the draining board, placed as if someone had rinsed it out and left it there to dry. A small sea of water pooled in the dip on the stainless steel where Kevin had dropped a hammer on it when he’d first moved in, clumsy bastard that he was. A box of opened Ritz crackers was on the side, next to the kettle, and a carton of milk had been left out. He lifted it, sniffed the contents.

  Fresh.

  He scrubbed his chin. Someone was fucking well living here.

  Kevin stormed through the rest of the cottage, seeing evidence that someone had washed in the bathroom recently — there were water droplets in the sink and bath, and a cheap red toothbrush lay on its side on the windowsill, a puddle of white liquid beneath the bristles. He saved the main bedroom until last — his and Robin’s — wanting to go in there and see if some fucker was there, yet at the same time not wanting to. That room held all the good memories. Of heated fucks, warm cuddles and talks long into the night. Of him getting dressed while Robin stayed in bed, watching and telling him how enticing his cock looked swinging the way it did.

  He clenched his jaw, staved off those useless images that taunted him daily, and pushed the door open. Saw what he expected, but still couldn’t believe it. Some wanker, sprawled out in their bed, the purple cotton sheets half on, half off his body, his tousled black hair splayed on the pillow.