by Tim Weaver
Take this chance, David.
I fired once. It hit Legion in the shoulder. He staggered back against one of the others in the group. Somewhere behind me, one of the women screamed. A shovel clanged against the earth. Legion lurched away from the group, clutching his wound.
I pulled myself out of the moment and headed for Bethany, leaving Alex on the ground, face down. Maybe dying. Maybe dead. I moved quickly around the edge of the house and towards the back door.
Snow crunched behind me.
The devil was coming.
I kicked open the back door, immediately realizing I’d led myself into a trap. Half-inside the kitchen, I turned back and saw his silhouette pass across the windows.
It was too late to go back.
Swivelling, I headed through to the living room — dark now, as daylight began to fade — and towards the staircase. I glanced back. From the semi-darkness of the kitchen he came: the horns on the mask; the eyes moving inside the holes; the mouth wide and leering.
I ran for the stairs, landing awkwardly when I reached them. Pain tore across my chest as I scrambled up on all fours, the first shots piercing the wall behind me. I could hear the old brickwork spitting out dust and debris, could hear the ping of a ricochet. I heard him move across the living room, broken tiles beneath his feet. I launched myself on to the landing and a shower of bullets followed me up, popping in the walls, bouncing off the stonework, lodging in the wooden floor.
I fired back three times, then made for Room A. As I moved, he followed. I could hear him pad up the stairs. The occasional creak but nothing more. He was quick. Lean. Streamlined.
He fired as he got to the top. Beyond the noise, I thought I could hear him whisper something, then the words were swallowed up as more bullets followed me into the room. The smell of rotting damp hit me.
I looked around.
The chimney flue, running from the fireplace downstairs, was angled enough to provide cover from the door. I dropped behind it. Flowers of light erupted from the landing. Bullets hit the door frame and walls. Wood splintered. Plaster spilled. Legion kept firing into the bedroom: the flue disintegrated beside me, floorboards cracked and broke, bullets ricocheted. One bullet missed my leg by an inch as I rolled to my side.
The window closest to me fractured and blew out. Glass landed on the floor and snow from the roof swept in. I clutched the gun with both hands. One of Legion’s feet hit a floorboard at the door to the room. A creak. I waited for him to move closer, but, instead, heard the clicking of his gun.
He was out of bullets.
The silence was like a shockwave.
I leaned out, as quickly as I could, and loosed off six shots. One didn’t even get beyond the room, hitting the door itself. One headed straight across the landing to the wall at the top of the stairs. The others lodged in the walls on the landing — every one a wasted bullet. Legion had already taken cover to the left of the doorway.
I stayed like that, leaning out towards the doorway, waiting for him to appear again. But he had second-guessed me. All I could hear was my breathing.
‘C-c-c-c-c-cockroach,’ he whispered.
The sound of something snapping into place.
Reloading.
There was a long pause, the silence hanging in the air.
And then I coughed.
Legion came in at me, firing quickly. I ducked back for cover, shielding my face from the dust and the glass. Bullets fizzed past me. One tore through the floorboards about two inches from my hand. Another made contact with my slipper, taking part of the toe off.
I knew I had to fire back, knew I had to attempt to repel him. If I didn’t, he would get closer and closer until he was near enough to put me down. I gripped the gun, lay my arm across my chest and emptied the rest of the clip.
The first three shots missed, going so wide of the mark he didn’t even stop shooting. The fourth got closer, briefly interrupting the noise from his gun.
Then the fifth hit something.
I heard footsteps — barely audible — retreating from the room.
I looked down at the gun, unsure whether he was really hit or whether this was all part of the game. The pain was becoming unbearable. Huge chunks of air escaped from my chest. Glass was embedded in my skin. I didn’t want to move.
I held the Beretta up in front of me and removed the magazine with a shaky right hand. I’d fired all fifteen bullets.
I waited for a moment. Breathed.
My teeth throbbed. My eyes were watering. I listened for Legion, for any sign of movement. All I could hear was the wind.
‘It doesn’t have to be like this,’ I said.
Nothing. No reply. No sound of movement.
I looked down into my lap. The gun felt heavy now. My whole body felt heavy. As if it had been turned inside out. It felt like Legion held all the cards, even if I’d somehow managed to hit him. He would wait. He was a soldier. He was trained to use silence and time to his advantage.
I swallowed and felt the saliva slide down my throat, moving towards the centre of my chest, where it blew up like an explosion. Pain scattered across my chest and back.
‘It doesn’t have to be like this,’ I said again.
Silence.
I reached into my pocket and quietly removed everything I’d taken from the shoebox: my wallet, my car keys, my photographs of Derryn, my wedding ring. And the bullet. A fine mist settled on the metal casing as the chill of the evening slithered its way in through the broken windows.
The bullet.
Sliding out the empty clip, I slotted the bullet into it and pushed the clip back into the Beretta.
43
Slowly, I edged out from the chimney flue. Held the gun up in front of my face. Slid along the floor on my knees. A shiver passed through me. Ahead of me, on the landing, I could see zigzags of snow, compacted, fallen from the soles of his shoes. I moved along the floorboards, churned up by the gunfire.
As I closed in on the doorway, I tried to angle the gun towards the sliver of wall that joined the two bedrooms. Legion had hidden there while he was reloading — but he wasn’t there now. I looked right to the bathroom, then left to the top of the stairs. Shadows were everywhere, but I couldn’t make him out. That meant there was only one place he could be.
Next door. The room with the rings.
I kept close to the wall as I approached the door. Held the Beretta as straight as I could. My hands turned red as I squeezed the handle. The muscles in my arms tightened, the veins in my wrists prominent through the skin. An image flashed in my head of Legion sitting in the corner of the room, opening fire as I tried to get in the first shot. I hesitated. Stopped short of the door.
Then, suddenly, I could smell him.
There was no aftershave overpowering his stench now. All I could smell was decay, as if death were crawling across the floor of the house towards me. I’d been right. It was like an animal scent, trailing him. A warning system. It was telling me not to come any closer. Except I had to if I was ever going to leave the farm alive.
I peered around the door a fraction, my eyes darting from one corner to the next. I thought I could see him, half-covered by darkness, directly across from me.
Then it felt like I got hit by a train.
I hadn’t seen Andrew coming. Hadn’t even thought about it. But the impact sent me flying, my knees leaving the floor, the gun dropping from my grasp. I looked up to see him clutching a table leg. I went for the gun — an automatic reaction, even though it was too far away — but he hit me again, low in the ribs.
I screamed out.
Instinct kicked in: I tried to gain some purchase on the floorboards, tried to crawl away so I could gain some distance, but my fingers slipped and he hit me again, in the ankles. I yelled out in pain as a paralysing tremor hummed up my leg. Then a third blow: in the small of my back, and this time I could feel my skin break beneath the cling film.
He stopped. Looked down at me. His black clothes made him
seem bigger in the semi-darkness. More powerful. As he stepped into what little light there was left, in his face I could see regret. Maybe even a little mercy.
‘I understand,’ he said, gently, and dropped to his haunches beside me. ‘I understand how you feel. How desperate you must be to get her back.’
I jabbed a leg at his kneecap. It missed, but unbalanced him, one of his hands planting on the floor behind, trying to prevent him falling on to his backside. I looked across the landing for the Beretta. It was slightly to my left, about six feet in front of me.
Hauling myself on to all fours, I started towards it.
But Andrew was on his feet again. He took one step in my direction and smashed the table leg into the same spot as before: the small of my back, right where one of the wounds had opened up.
I yelled out and collapsed on to my stomach.
There was silence for a moment. He was watching me, seeing if I was going to try to make a move again. When I didn’t, through the corner of my eye, I saw him drop down for a second time, but further away, so I couldn’t make contact.
‘After I got out of prison,’ he said, turning the table leg in his hands, ‘my parole officer found me a job teaching kids how to play football at a youth club. He knew the people who ran it. The first evening I turned up there, the guy in charge pulled me aside and said, “I know you’ve got a record. You’re just a favour for a friend, so if you mess up once, even if it’s forgetting to tell me we’re out of orange squash, you’re finished.” I got twenty pounds cash in hand, and was claiming every week as well. When Sunday came round, I had nothing. The temptation to steal, the temptation to claw it back, whoever I hurt, was immense.’
I looked across the landing, to the Beretta.
‘Go for the gun, and I will put my foot through the back of your head.’
I glanced at him.
‘Just give me an excuse, David. I can’t wait to see what your face looks like as it leaks through the floorboards.’
I closed my eyes. Tried to memorize the layout of the building. Tried to recall anything I could use as a makeshift weapon.
He started talking again.
‘Prison was tough,’ he continued, and I opened my eyes and watched him. ‘So, I didn’t want to go back. And, anyway, about five months after I started there, everything changed. I got talking to the mum of one of the boys. He’d had leukaemia, but it was in remission. And the way she spoke about him, about the love she had for him, it just absolutely stopped me dead. When I found out she was on her own, I asked her out — even before I knew her name. She was the one who first took me to church. She was how I found my faith.’
He stood. Looked down at me.
‘Charlotte,’ he said.
There was a long pause as he stared at me.
‘We’d been seeing each other for about two years when her son’s leukaemia came back. I’d already moved in with them by then and had a job. Everything in my life was perfect. But when Charlotte found out the disease had come back, something just turned off in her, as if she knew this time it wasn’t going until it took her boy with it.’
Something moved in his eyes.
‘I came home three months after he passed away and she was lying beneath the surface of the water in the bath. She’d overdosed on sleeping pills.’
He gripped the table leg harder, both hands wriggling to get a better grip.
‘That was when I came up with the idea for this place. A place to help people start again. To leave behind the memories, everything they wish they could forget. I went to the bank and they turned me down on the spot. But eventually, a few months later, someone cared enough to help me out.’
I shook my head.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ he said.
I turned my head, pain shooting down the centre of my back.
‘You’re not helping anyone.’
He paused. Watched me.
Then, suddenly, he moved, hitting out at me with the table leg. It caught me in the chin.
‘Fuck!’
My head hit the floor, blood in my mouth, on my lips, across my face. White spots flashed in front of my eyes. I was disorientated, unable to make anything out.
‘You of all people should understand what I’m trying to do!’ he screamed from behind me, his voice trembling with rage.
I looked for him, but my vision was still blurred. One doorway became the next. He’d moved back. Briefly faded into the night.
‘This place is built for people like you!’
Then he emerged from the darkness and leaned into me.
‘And it’s not going to stop now.’
His face shifted back into focus.
‘You’re not going to stop me, David.’
He raised the table leg above his head. His grip tightened, his teeth clenched. I curled up into a ball, protecting myself.
But the final blow never came.
A dull thud sounded.
Andrew staggered sideways, clutching his head.
At the top of the stairs behind him was Alex. He turned and punched a piece of the table up into Andrew’s guts. The air hissed out of him. He doubled over, clutching his stomach.
Alex struck again.
This time he pounded the chunk of wood into the base of Andrew’s spine. The tall man stumbled forward and fell to the floor, his legs giving way under him like a deer shot down in a hunt. A fourth and fifth blow came, a chunk of wood splintering this time, breaking at the sheer force of the blow. It spun off into the bathroom and landed among the glass.
Alex briefly glanced at me, and then kicked Andrew in the face. More blood, spraying out over the wall behind him; over the carpet. Then he kicked him again. And again. And again. Gradually, Andrew’s eyes glazed over and all that came after were sounds without reaction: skin splitting; bones breaking. No grunts. No groans. No breathing. Just a slapping sound, like raw meat being tenderized.
‘Alex,’ I said.
He stopped, panting heavily, and looked around towards me, across to the room with the rings, to my gun, and to the blood on my clothes.
He came across and helped me up, lacing his arms through mine. My balance was affected. My body felt like it might fall apart. He guided me back towards Room A. I went straight for the gun, grasping it as tightly as I could. Once we were inside, hidden by the darkness, I brought his head towards me.
‘Legion,’ I whispered, pointing towards the wall that divided the two bedrooms. I could see in his face he got it immediately. Dread rose to the surface.
Click.
We both turned, looking towards Andrew. But the noise had come from the room with the rings.
Click.
Click.
‘Oh, shit,’ Alex said. ‘He’s coming.’
44
Alex turned to me. ‘You need to use me,’ he whispered, glancing towards the door. ‘You need to pretend you will kill me.’
‘What?’
He stood up. I grabbed hold of his arm and pulled him back down.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
He looked at me. ‘They can’t kill me.’
‘They can.’
‘They can’t.’
‘They can kill you, Alex.’
‘Grab hold of me and follow me out on to the landing,’ he said.
‘What? Are you fucking crazy?’
‘Do it,’ he said, and looked me square in the eyes. ‘Put a gun to my head and walk me through. When you see him, threaten to kill me.’
‘You must be out of your fucking mind.’
‘No,’ he replied. ‘Trust me.’
I looked at him.
‘Please, David. Trust me.’
He got to his feet so his back was to me. I looked up at him, waiting for him to turn around. Waiting to see the fear in his eyes. But he didn’t look down. He stood and stared into the darkness like a soldier about to clear the trenches and head over the top.
‘Do it,’ he said.
‘He w
ill kill you, Alex.’
‘He won’t,’ he said, fiercely this time.
He remained still, looking out on to the landing. I stood and inched in close to him so Legion wouldn’t have a clear shot at me. Then we began to move forward. The floorboards creaked beneath our feet. Alex’s shoes kicked up splintered wood and shattered pieces of glass. We stepped out on to the landing, briefly sliding in Andrew’s blood. And then we turned right and edged into the room with the rings, little by little, every footstep feeling heavier.
Further and further into the lair.
‘I’ll kill him,’ I said, staring into the darkness. All around us was the night, hanging from the walls and the windows like blankets. I looked from corner to corner, pressing the gun into the back of Alex’s head. ‘If it’s him or me, I swear I’ll kill him.’
A half-step towards the centre of the room.
‘I swear.’
There was no reply. No movement.
‘Are you listening to me?’
I glanced left and right.
‘I’ll kill him, I promise you.’
My eyes adjusted a little more. Shapes started to emerge from the corner of the room. An uneven floorboard. The hole in the wall with the message help me. The rings. The water running down the brickwork.
‘Do you want that?’
More shapes.
‘Answer me.’
We shuffled further forward.
‘Answer me.’
Click.
A gun cocked behind me and, before we had a chance to turn, I felt it at the back of my neck. The end of the barrel pushed in against the top of my spine.
Legion had tricked us. He’d moved to the shadows on the stairs while Alex and I had been forming a plan in the next room.
‘Cockroach,’ he said quietly.
‘I’ll kill him.’
He pushed the gun in harder.
‘You’re not a killer, cockroach.’
‘Put your gun down,’ I said, pushing back against his gun’s muzzle.
‘No.’
‘Put it down.’
The same tone, the same control: ‘No.’
‘Put your gun down now.’
