by Tim Lebbon
Buffy would kick its ass, she thought, but she was no Buffy, and in reality she knew that her favourite heroine would be just as scared as her.
She scrambled to her feet, pulling herself out of the brambles and receiving more cuts and thorns in the process, not caring, wanting only to be away from this window, this house and the thing that sat within. Unreality grabbed her as she lost a trainer to the bramble bush. She giggled, a high-pitched titter that felt good and bad at the same time; good because it cheered her, bad because she shouldn’t be cheered. She was more lost than she had ever thought possible, somehow she had wondered from there to here, and she had no idea how she was going to get back.
She ran again. Her trainerless foot soon began to hurt and bleed. The buildings pressed in around her, and when she was crossing an open space or following a path between trees the air pressed in as well, the sunlight, the bushes and trees and grasses, all of them unkempt and unkept, closing in and giving the sense that they would envelop her at any second.
Once she thought she heard someone calling her name, but when she stopped and held her breath all she could hear was the humming and her beating heart.
How many people, she wondered, how many things to make such a noise?
As she ran past the houses, tears and sweat mingled on her cheeks. Blood smeared her hot skin from the cuts and scrapes she’d received. And he bare foot soon began to hurt her very badly indeed. Misery soon joined the terror.
And she tried not to see in any windows.
Seven
They arrived home without seeing any more weird stuff, but with the sense that things were happening all over. The scenery looked different, the air was altered, even the sunlight had taken on a mysterious hue, as if the subtle tints of morning, noon and night had combined into a bland monotone. The village felt like the whole world now, and the world was changing.
Stig and his mum disappeared back to their own house. His father was in work and Stig started crying when his mother mentioned him. Andy knew that his friend had an intense fear of his father dying, he had dreams and nightmares and he talked about it a lot. So today, when death had visited the village and decided to stay for a while, Stig’s fears were coming to the fore once again.
As he and his mum entered their own bungalow, Andy started thinking about his own dad.
He worked in the city managing a second-hand bookshop. The money was good only because of the long hours and dedication he put in, and also because of the antiquarian book sideline he ran from the shop; his own business, his own risks. He called it new money for old dreams, and he seemed to have an uncanny knack of homing in on rare and valuable books, like a sparrow-hawk zeroing on a mouse from five hundred feet. He could steer his way through a roomful of books in minutes and pull out a treasure, something that would buy them a much-needed new refrigerator or pay for a weekend away. Those Friday’s when his father came home and dropped a roll of notes onto the kitchen table were always the best.
But today was Wednesday, and it was still only mid-afternoon, and his dad wouldn’t be home for another three or four hours. In the meantime there were dead people in their village, things were that should not be, and a feeling that everything was askew pervaded every thought. Andy’s hackles had been up since leaving the square. It felt as if a huge electrical storm was coming. The skies were clear, the sun merciless.
“We should call Dad,” Andy said. His mother had moved to the sink to fill two glasses with cold water. “Mum?”
“Huh?” She really hadn’t heard, Andy saw. She’d been so far away, so absorbed …
“I said we should call Dad. Tell him what’s going on and to be careful ...”
“When he comes home,” his mum finished for him.
Andy nodded. “Honest Mum, Stig and I were just turned around. And those ambulances. Dad may be too, except coming from the other way.”
“Hmm.” His mother took a gulp of water, spilling some of it down her neck. It spotted her T-shirt, turning grey to black like blood at twilight. She didn’t seem to notice. She looked at the bare wall over Andy’s shoulder, seemed to find that uncomfortable, turned and stared out at the back garden instead.
“What’s happening?” he said almost to himself, hardly expecting an answer. He was not disappointed. His mother leaned against the sink and looked out at the rose bushes in the corner of the garden, the greenhouse hunkered against the wall, the water-butts holding precious rainwater, the vegetable patch that was slowly but surely wilting in the sun, the patchy lawn that begged for a drink, not realising that it held the lowest priority in the triage of drought … and yet she seemed to see none of it. Andy watched her from the side. Her eyes did not move. They were staring but taking nothing in, seeing something far different from what lay beyond the window.
For a terrible moment he thought that there was something wrong with her, something to do with all this. Then she moved, smiled tightly at him – the expression hurt him almost as much as it appeared to pain her – and went across the hall and into her bedroom.
This time the door clicked shut behind her.
“Mum …” Andy felt instantly alone, deserted and terrified. The kitchen was much emptier without his mother there, even though she’d been virtually ignoring him for the last couple of minutes anyway. The knowledge that she was in her bedroom did not help – Andy felt as spooked and isolated as when his parents left him alone. It never happened for too long – a few minutes while they inspected their neighbour’s new patio, an hour or two when they drove into town to shop – but he always felt an instant sense of panic, something he hated to admit to but which he knew came from the crazy idea that once gone, they may never return.
He knew that his mum would come out of her bedroom, because there was nowhere else to go. But when he heard her rustling about in her wardrobe the feeling of dread intensified. He was not only pushed to the back of her mind … he was out of it.
He only hoped that she wasn’t as well.
Andy wandered into the hallway and stood outside his parents’ bedroom. His mum had closed the door without saying anything, a sure sign that she didn’t want him to follow her in, but what could be so important now? Today, when such awful stuff was happening, what could be so urgent?
He almost knocked the door but decided not to. Something kept him away, guiding him into the living room and the telephone on the table by his dad’s armchair. You pick up on things, his mum had said, but as he picked up the receiver and dialled he knew that is was a simple need to talk to his father that was guiding him now. To speak to him, feel the strength in his voice, ask him to come home and protect them. Ask him for help.
That’s what fathers did: they protected and helped. Like that time when they’d been walking in one of the orchards at the far end of the village. Andy had wandered on ahead of his parents. They were holding hands and kissing, it was gross, and besides, with them behind him and open countryside in front it made him feel alone. He’d been eight then, and the notion of hiking through fields on his own was an exciting one. But an eight year old, his mum said, never thinks about nasty men who like to take little kids away. They never think about holes in the ground, rotten branches on trees that look good enough to climb all day, rusty farm equipment just waiting to impale some unfortunate, cars destine to run over …
And, Andy discovered, they never thought about sows out to protect their litter.
The old pig was black and pink and huge, its teats swollen, haunches rolling, head dipping and raising at it charged him. He’d never even seen the sty as he wandered between trees. He’d never been this close to a pig, either, and her size paralysed him. Her eyes twinkled in the sun, and it felt as if he was frozen in the dazzle of an approaching car’s headlights.
He’d heard two sets of footfalls and his mother swept him into her arms. His dad stood his ground before the charging sow, arms out wide, legs braced against the impact. The sow had been bluffing. It slowed down, stopped turned and sauntered back
to the corrugated iron sty, piglets darting around its feet like fireflies in the long grass.
It had been bluffing. But his dad hadn’t known that.
“Dad?”
“Andy? Hi son, thought you’d be out in the woods or building dams in the stream, or something.” His father always sounded more enthusiastic about these things than Andy felt, as if he mourned for his own youth and tried to relive it through Andy.
“Well, I was Dad …” He was going to cry. Hearing his father’s voice, knowing he wasn’t here, made his eyes sting and his throat tighten. A muttered curse from his parents’ bedroom didn’t help, making him wish more than ever that they could be all together as a family.
“But?” The phone hissed in his ear. It may have been static, or perhaps his dad was packing a book while he spoke.
Andy closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. He thought of Stig, crying and dripping snot from his nose, and he didn’t want to be like that. He wanted to impress his dad, show him how brave he was, how adult. He couldn’t be a kid forever.
“But,” he said, and then the tears came. He shoulders shook, his breath hitched in and out as if changing gear. He felt his face screwing up and tears pattered onto the table as his father buzzed in his ear.
“Andy? Andy, what’s wrong son? Where’s your mother?”
“She’s here,” he managed to say between sobs. “Dad, she’s here.” He was trying to convince himself. He could still hear movement in the bedroom and an occasional mutter or curse, but it felt as if much of his mother had been left back there in the square. She’d changed from the second she’d set eyes on the church, become colder, as if its old stone could leech a warm soul to its hungry self. It’s always cold in a church, someone had said. He wondered if those two dead men had gone cold straight away.
“What’s wrong then son? Stop crying now, tell me what’s wrong.”
Andy sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. A streak of snot silvered his knuckles, reminding him of Stig. Wish you were here now, Stig, he thought.
“Everything’s gone weird, Dad,” he said, and once he could talk without crying he spurted it all out, telling his father everything. It only took a couple of minutes, and that surprised Andy. Could something that could be told so quickly really be so frightening?
It was his dad’s turn to pause.
“Dad? Can you come home, Dad?”
“I’ve seen nothing on the news,” his dad said, and Andy knew he’d been accessing the news service on his mobile phone as they’d been talking on the land line.
“That’s because no one can get out,” Andy said. For the first time he realised just how frightening that was. If nobody could get out, something must be causing it. Keeping them in. “No one can tell the news people because they can’t leave.”
“You’re phoning me, want me to tell the news folks?”
He heard the challenge in his dad’s voice. “Oh yeah …”
“Can I speak to your mum?”
“She’s in the bedroom.” Andy glanced across the hallway and saw the bedroom door still shut.
“Can you call her?”
Andy listened. There was still an occasional shuffling and a few indecipherable mumblings from his mother.
“Dad, can you come home? I’m scared. There are dead people in the village, Dad, maybe there’s someone here going around killing them.”
“Let me speak with your mother, Andy.” Whatever his dad had been doing whilst talking – wrapping a book, searching the web – he’d stopped now. His voice had gone serious, all playful tones vanquished. Andy only hoped it was concern for his family rather than anger at him for making up stupid stories.
“Mum!” Andy called, but not too loudly. Tears were still flowing, though quietly now. “Dad, I think she’s—“
The bedroom door opened and his mother stepped out. “Who are you talking to?” she asked, concern stretching the last word as she saw his tears.
“It’s Dad,” Andy said, proffering the receiver. “He wants to talk to you. Tell him, Mum, tell him what’s happening. Tell him he has to come home.”
She took the receiver and Andy stood close by as she sat on the arm of the chair, talked to her husband, told him that someone had been killed in the churchyard as they watched. “Crushed,” she said, “I suppose.”
A buzz from the receiver.
“I don’t know, honestly. But then someone was chased by … by unicorns ... and there was something in the ditch …”
She trailed off as there was another buzz from the phone, a softer one, as if a fly was trapped in there. Andy’s mum glanced at him, smiled softly. “I think so,” she said into the receiver. “Will be when you come home, anyway. And Jack… be careful. Andy and Stig say they couldn’t get out of the village, there may be … .well, be careful. And bring help.”
Andy left the room and headed to the toilet. His mother’s final words made him pause, eyes wide, fists clenching as her tone bit in: serious; dreadful; terrified.
“Jack,” she said, almost whispering. “Just be very fucking careful.” Then she hung up the receiver and sighed shakily. Andy did not want to know if she was crying.
He didn’t want to know what she’d seen when she looked at the church, either, nor as she stood at the kitchen sink, staring out at their ordered garden and seeing something else.
He didn’t want to know, and yet he had to
Stepping quickly to the bathroom door he opened it slightly and slammed it shut, back-treading very softly, nudging open his parents’ bedroom door with his elbow, all the time keeping one eye on the living-room door in case his mother’s shadow came through. He couldn’t hear her moving and that was good, but it was also bad as well. It meant that she was sitting in there staring at nothing instead of coming out to see if her son was all right, after all the things he’d seen today, really, surely, she should be making sure he was all right.
He pushed the door almost shut and turned around to survey the room.
It was an alien landscape in here, something he never saw without one of his parents present. Occasionally at the weekend he’d bring his dad a cup of tea after he’d had a lie-in, but now he was here on his own. He could smell his mother and father, their aromas imbued in the carpets, the bed, the curtains, talc stains by the dressing table and aftershave bottles on the windowsill. The bed was still rumpled and unmade from last night, and Andy viewed it with a mixture of suspicion, fascination and disgust. That’s where they did it, where they fucked, and the thought of his parents …
He looked at the dressing table. The slew of photographs tucked into the mirror edges seemed to chart his entire life from left to right, birth to now. Here’s where his mother spent her private moments preparing for the day, putting on her face, finding new wrinkles and grey hairs, and still she surrounded herself with Andy. He stared out from two dozen pictures, and every one of them must watch her as she sat there. That made him feel weird. It made him think about how disrespectful he was being, invading his parents’ privacy like this, and he suddenly had a very bad taste in his mouth.
He turned to leave, hoping and praying that his mum wouldn’t see him coming out. And then he glanced inside the open wardrobe, looked up at the shelf where his mum had been rooting around earlier, and he saw a book. It had been thrown back in a hurry. Its tattered front cover was open so that it lay across an untidy heap of old curtains and blankets like a dead bird.
Andy stretched up, snagged the thick cover between two fingers, pulled the book and caught it before it could hit the floor.
He was young. He’d just become a teenager, but for now people still treated him like a kid. He forever dreamed of moving on, growing older, reaching an age where he was not only his own person, but was perceived to be his own person by others.
Andy wanted all of this, but he wanted it under his own conditions. He didn’t want adulthood forced upon him. That would be unfair.
He opened the book
His li
fe would never be the same again.
Nightmare
Jack had to get home. Every mile made it more imperative that he did so, each bend in the country lanes reminded him of Andy’s distress like a punch in the face. His son’s voice on the phone, his tears and his strength and the desperation as he’d called his mother – maybe he’d wanted her to hear, maybe not—had driven Jack into something of a panic. Upon closing the bookshop, ejecting the few customers who’d been browsing and stuffing the day’s takings into a brown envelope, Jack had strolled slowly to the car park. Every stride had brought back memories of that call. The sparse conversation replayed in his mind, Andy’s tears interspersed with his most adult mutterings. And step by step Jack’s pace had increased.
By the time he reached the car park he was running.
It was a half-hour drive home. Twenty minutes after leaving the car park Jack realised that he was minutes from the village, and he wondered at just how he hadn’t ended up wrapped around a tree or buried head-first in a lorry’s grille. He often seemed to arrive home with very little memory of the journey. Frightening enough, but when the bulk of that auto-pilot journey was spent travelling at thirty miles per hour above the speed limit, it did not bear thinking about.
He loved his son dearly, and yet sometimes he found it difficult to see him as anything older than his true age. He was thirteen years old and however much Andy liked to give the impression that he was older than his years, he’d always be Jack’s little boy. Perhaps it was a parent’s curse – or, more likely, a son’s – that youth could ostensibly be regained through one’s offspring. If Andy grew up, Jack grew old. An easy equation that held a billion lifetimes in its balance.
Andy made things up. Jack’s wife often commented that he was sensitive to things, but Jack always took this the wrong way. He knew what she meant. But that worried him, scared him sometimes, and he preferred not to think on it. He’d rather believe that Andy told fibs, made up stories, than acknowledge that he saw truths hidden from others.
