by Suki Fleet
The package the delivery person had failed to post through the letter box swung lightly against the glass, tapping faintly. It wouldn’t take much force to break the fragile panes. And if the window broke Nicky would have to board it up and his world would be even darker… though boarded up might be safer. He bit down on his thumbnail, annoyed at the irritatingly helpful gardener, annoyed at the delivery person, annoyed at himself. He wanted whatever the solicitor had sent him in that package. He wanted it inside the house.
Up until now the strange solicitor had only ever sent letters, and they’d always contained a single letterheaded piece of paper stating their ongoing and loyal obligation to Lance (even though Lance had always said how much he hated dealing with the legal system), folded around another scrap of paper with Lance’s hard to read writing on it.
No shadows live in dark dark spaces
No sun shines on the deep
I wonder if my lover’s faces
Are something I can keep.
March, march, march little solider
March march march
Through the trees tall and dark
March march march
Those two had made the most sense, but all Lance’s messages read like slightly creepy, cryptic nonsense and Nicky didn’t really understand what he was supposed to do with them. He had folded each message into a misshapen swan and sat them on the bookshelf near the desk where he could stare at them occasionally and try to figure them out. So far there were four of them and from the size of that package it didn’t look as though there were going to be five this week.
There wouldn’t be anything this week unless he went outside and retrieved the damn parcel. Shoving the chair back, Nicky got to his feet. His patheticness needed to stop. He’d been safe for two years, hadn’t he? Lance had kept him safe. Going outside was hardly the height of risk. What if someone was just biding their time, though? So far he’d seen no one out there, no one had come for him. Yeah, he still heard noises in the house. But the house was old and a lot of it was most probably his overactive imagination. He hadn’t had any threats from the family for weeks. But he couldn’t seem to stop waiting for the worst to happen, whatever that might be. Sometimes he wished it would just happen so it was over with. He wasn’t exactly a hard target. If someone wanted to break in and hurt him, what the hell could he do to stop them? Scream? Throw books at them? Fear hurt more than knives, more than broken bones. Fear was what was going to destroy him.
Lance had told him the closest neighbour as the crow flies was Varhad’s garage two miles south. There was no one else. Lance had liked to joke about how isolated they were.
The thought of going outside alone made Nicky want to panic. But he’d gone outside yesterday—when the gardener was there, he reminded himself as he shoved his feet into his decrepit Converse. Yeah, he’d taken all of ten steps out of the front door, while someone strong—Nicky rolled his eyes but didn’t deny the truth—and honest-looking was poking around the side of the house. Right then, there was no one. At least, he hoped there was no one, didn’t he?
His hands were shaking too hard to even attempt doing the laces, so he shoved the ragged ends inside the shoes so as not to trip.
Mostly he kept his hair braided but today it was loose, a blood red curtain hanging down his back. He tucked a few long strands behind his ears and gathered the rest to twist into the hood of his top.
Taking a deep breath, he wrenched open the study door, then shut it tight behind him and pocketed the key.
Head bowed, arms wrapped around his chest, Nicky made his way to the kitchen. It was getting dark fast now. The wind rattled the thin glass in the doors. Outside, the long grass surged towards the house in violent sea-like waves. Hardly any distance away, the dark copse loomed, the tall black trees shivering and waving. Agitated, Nicky didn’t look at it full on, and yet now he was thinking about it, it was all he could see.
With a loud clatter, one of the kitchen units stacked by the French doors slipped and broke apart on the patio, knocked over by the wind. Nicky’s heart hammered so hard he thought he might throw up. He fell back into the hallway. He couldn’t go that way.
For a moment, all he could do was stand in the corridor hyperventilating and unable to think. He dug his fingernails into his palm until his breathing calmed.
You are ridiculous. You are a ridiculous excuse for a human being, scared of your own shadow, a particularly unhelpful voice echoed in his head.
“Fuck you,” he hissed.
Bunching his hands into fists, he marched towards the front entrance hall. It was a huge echoey space, dominated by the wide sweeping staircase Nicky never used now.
He glanced around at the faded grandeur—the dust and the cobwebs carpeting the dull speckled marble of the floor, the darkness creeping at the edge of everything. If he stood still enough for long enough he imagined the oppressive weight of the house would crush him.
So don’t stand still.
Bending down, he began to unhook the bolts keeping the front door impenetrable. He knew it was slightly ridiculous given how easy it was for someone to break in through a window.
Dead leaves swirled around his feet as he opened the door. The sky rolled stormily above and a few fat drops of rain splotched against the pale stone of the porch between the pillars. The wind gusted and gusted, but the house was like a rock stuck in a stormy sea—solid and unyielding. It should perhaps have felt protective, but it didn’t.
Clutching his arms around himself, Nicky closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Those meditation books had talked about centring yourself, but every time he tried the more he became certain there was nothing at the centre of him, nothing solid, nothing to hold on to. He was empty right the way through. All he could imagine was the wind blowing though him as though he were a ghost.
I am real. I am here. He chanted over and over, not allowing himself space to think about the dark, or noise of the wind as it gusted around him. Cai had cut a path through the despicable plants and Nicky followed it. Outside the study window, he unhooked the package from the stick and was back inside the house in less than ninety seconds. He bolted the door and raced back to the study, ripping open the package before he’d even turned the key in the study door’s lock.
He stared at the contents. It had to be a joke. Didn’t it? He re-read the solicitor’s letter, but it was a carbon copy of all the previous solicitor’s letters he’d received.
What the fuck was he supposed to do with a pair of diving goggles?
Cyril5 the hat eater
Delivery person should have tried harder to put package through letter box.
Cai stared at the note sellotaped to the inside of the window and shook his head. If a package needed signing for, it didn’t matter if it fit through the letter box or not. And besides, there was no way that package would have fit through the letter box unless the guy had jumped on it to squash it, and somehow Cai didn’t think that any delivery guy who jumped on his deliveries was going to be a delivery guy for very long.
The package was gone, though, so The Occupier (Cai still preferred Note Leaver) must have somehow retrieved it.
As long as there was no problem with Cai signing for it, he didn’t care that there was no thank you for taking in my delivery so I didn’t have to go pick it up from God knows where in my possibly non-existent car. Or, thank you so I don’t have to sit around contemplating my existence while I wait for redelivery and then sacrifice my anonymity when I realised I do actually have to come out and sign for my shit type of note.
Cai had more pressing things to worry about—today it was raining. Really fucking raining. It had rained last night too. In the minutes it had taken to walk around the side of the house, he’d become utterly soaked, his clothes heavy and sticking to his skin. His hair was plastered to his forehead, the rain dripping into his eyes, clinging to his lashes.
If someone had suggested waterproof clothing, Cai would have given a hollow-sounding laugh.
He could feel his feet slowly sinking into the soft mud of the flower bed. The ground around him was turning into a swamp. He pulled at the trimmer’s slippery cord. Fuck, he hoped the deranged old thing still worked.
Sitting around the wobbly kitchen table last night, Soph had helped him look into hiring some much more adequate tools on her borrowed-from-school laptop, but he’d been wary about putting down so much of the money he’d earned for the deposit. A deposit that was non-refundable if any of the tools were damaged. Cai decided to pray the hedge trimmer survived getting a bit wet.
The trimmer did survive. It was robust and simply made. But far too quickly, it ran out of petrol and died. Unlike yesterday, that wasn’t a complete disaster. Cai had stopped off at a nearby garage on the way over this morning and had filled two water bottles with petrol. They were in the back of his van. He meandered down the muddy path towards the front of the house and nearly slipped over in shock when a burst of angry yelling shattered the rainy quiet. Using whatever branches and bushes he could to steady himself through the mud, Cai hurried along the path.
A big, wine-coloured car with the number plate Cyril5 was parked up next to his van. Cai paused in the overgrowth, longing to step out but also wanting to get a gist of what was going on before he did. Holding back was a tactic he’d learned the hard way. In the YOI it had probably saved his life on more than one occasion, or at least saved him from being hurt.
He couldn’t quite see the front door from this position. But whoever had arrived was hammering on it and yelling for the door to be opened. Cai thought he might have caught the word whore once or twice, fucking bitch too.
No one in their right mind was going to open that door, especially not to any of that abuse.
Cai listened for another minute. All he wanted to do was march over and tell Cryril5 or whoever he was to fuck off—two years ago he wouldn’t have even thought twice about doing just that and fuck the consequences.
But it was obvious Cyril5 couldn’t control his temper and Cai’s involvement was unlikely to end well. He could picture the sad look on Soph’s face if he got into trouble while still on supervision. He could get sent back inside if that happened, no questions asked. I was just looking out for someone, he’d say, and his case worker would shake her buzz-cut blonde head and mouth Wrong place wrong time, yeah? like she’d heard it too many times before. And even if she understood, it wouldn’t stop them taking Soph away from him to live in a home somewhere.
For the next four months he had to keep out of any trouble whatsoever—not that he intended to get into any trouble after that, he just needed to be extra careful until his supervision order was over.
He gave the trimmer in his hand a disappointed glance. Even appearing in the driveway to get a can of petrol from his van was likely to get him involved. He’d go hack at a few vines instead and keep listening. If he was only hacking with his little scythe, he could hear enough to make sure Cyril5 was only shouting and no one was actually getting hurt. Hopefully the guy would eventually get tired of his own hoarse yells and piss off without any intervention.
Remaining close to the corner of the house, Cai stared up at the branches and leaves obscuring the sky. Without the trimmer, even some of the smaller vines were going to be impossible to take down, never mind the trees. With his blistered hand throbbing beneath his makeshift bandage, and the muscles of his back and shoulders burning already, Cai got back to work.
Pretty yellowing leaves, heavy with rain, swirled down with every whack of his scythe. It was more sweat than rain now making his T-shirt cling to him. Another few cuts, a tug or two and this impossible vine was going to—
“I demand that you stop what you’re doing, right now!” a voice shouted with the kind of authority that expected to be obeyed. The same voice that had been yelling insults a few minutes ago.
Cai stopped and glanced around, but there was no one in sight. He shook his head and carried on tugging at the plant no longer suckered to the corner of the house. He never had been very good at accepting orders anyway.
Branches rustled as someone forced their way through the bushes, ignoring, or perhaps not seeing, the path Cai had made.
“Watch out,” Cai shouted, not wanting to injure anyone, even if this person was rude and Cai more than wished they’d climb back in their big shiny car and go away.
Whoever was in the house obviously didn’t want to see them. Cai more than hoped Cyril5 had bruised their hand from hammering on the door for so long. All of a sudden he felt weirdly protective of his note leaver in there. If this sort of abuse was a regular thing, no wonder they were wary of answering the door.
Debris and leaves flew into the air as the vine landed heavily on the ground.
“If you don’t stop damaging this property, I will call the police.”
Frowning, Cai turned and found a man in his twenties or thirties staring at him with the kind of distaste Cai had never felt aimed at him before, even in the YOI. Cyril5, he presumed. With an old-fashioned bowler hat perched above his round face and his shiny pinstriped suit, Cyril5 looked as though he’d been transported from a different era.
“The police?” Cai said, staring. He noticed with a certain satisfaction the way Cyril5 was trying to hide his raw-looking fist, and that his expensive-looking shoes and trousers were splattered in mud.
“Listen, you great oaf, this is criminal damage! You are destroying my property.”
“Your property?” Cai knew he needed to stop echoing everything Cyril5 said but he was having trouble processing it.
“Are you incapable of understanding?” Cyril5 shook his head and sneered. “Have you any idea who I am? This place belongs to my family. A very powerful family. One day it’s going to be mine. Whoever employed you had no right to. What you’re doing is illegal.”
Cai blinked, trying to show no outward reaction as little threads of doubt unspooled and tangled up inside him. How did he know he’d been employed by the real owner of this property? Being employed by someone he’d never even seen come out of the house could probably look pretty bad… even more so if it turned out he was doing something illegal and the police discovered he was just out of a YOI.
The world faded a little at the edges until Cai realised he was holding his breath.
This is ridiculous, he thought, sucking in air.
Cyril5 obviously had an agenda here. He wanted something and he wasn’t getting it, so he’d come to bully whoever he could find. And he was annoying and rude and the stuff he’d shouted to whoever was inside the house was horrible and rude too, and he obviously didn’t live here, and he didn’t have a key to get in the house….
Cai squashed his doubts.
“I’m just doing my job,” he replied coolly, bending down to lift the vine. His patience wasn’t a bottomless well, but it ran pretty deep.
“Lance’s little whore has no right whatsoever to employ you to do this. You’ll both go to jail.”
“Go away.” Cai shook his head at the ludicrous threat.
Ignoring Cyril5’s growl of outrage, Cai dragged the vine over to the pile of plants he as yet had no idea how to get rid of. The most obvious option was not one he was going to consider or think too much about. This time of year was hard enough as it was; as November approached the parks and nighttime skies would be full of explosions and fire. Even the word bonfire made him shiver. Hi
s heart quickened.
He closed his eyes for half a second. No.
“I am Cyril Du Vey and you’ll regret this. I’ll make sure of it.”
Definitely a Cyril, then. Cai rolled his eyes and flattened his pile of sticks out a little more so it didn’t look so bonfire-like. It would be too wet to light anyway, not without some sort of accelerant. Biting the inside of his cheek, Cai stood up.
Still very much trying to ignore Cyril Du Vey’s existence, he tipped his face to the sky. The rain had almost stopped. Soaked and cold and needing to keep moving, Cai bent back down to heft some of the newly fallen leaves into his pile.
Cyril was shifting from foot to foot, his phone pressed to his ear. It was only when Cai accidentally made eye contact that he spoke. “You and that little whore in there think you’ve got this all planned out, don’t you? Well, we’ll see what the police have to say about that.”
Cai ignored Cyril’s steely glare and carried on heaping leaves, which only made Cyril clench his jaw and purse his lips, like a toddler about to throw a fit.
“The police are taking a long time to answer,” Cai said casually—far, far too long in Cai’s experience. Growing up in a badly run care home, with a dozen other kids the system had failed, had taught him to pick out a hollow threat from half a mile away.
His hands were beginning to ache from scooping up the cold wet leaves. Going back to his van to get out of the cold for five minutes was what he’d really like to do, but didn’t want to with Cyril following—he felt more in control out here, and going to his van would seem like he was retreating from the battle. And there was no way he was retreating from anything.
Cyril pulled his phone away from his ear and tapped the screen a few more times, before speaking into it. “Yes, I have a trespasser causing criminal damage and I’d like him removed…. Twenty minutes is perfect, thank you.” He turned his attention back to Cai. “They’re on their way.”
