by Adam Nevill
He had been taken from danger, from imminent mortal danger, but then enclosed in a stinking bed in an airless room in an old house, and left unaware of the location of the house. A person needs to know at least that to feel comfortable; needs to know where they are in the world. Ever since Hutch decided on taking the short cut, he was finished with not knowing precisely where he was. ‘Fuck you, H.’
But when you have taken a person into your care, and you feed them, shelter them, but do not attend to what could be a serious head injury, and Sweden is a modern country with emergency services, hospitals, even helicopters when required, then …
Luke pulled his dirty fingers down his wet face, utterly confounded by the absurdity and the impossibility of the situation.
They would tell him nothing. Fenris evaded his questions. No useful information would be forthcoming from his hosts; he sensed that much. He was being kept here against his will. So escape should be his only focus. Because the masks, the music, the screaming, the fire down there in the dark grass: it was all leading to a terrible conclusion.
He’d tried not to think about that thing in the woods, of what killed his friends. Until now he had been too ill and hurt and tired to do so. But his dealings with it were not over. Of that he was certain.
They were here for it too. Blood Frenzy. And they had revealed their identities through the silly demoniac names that could be easily traced through the P.O. Box in Oslo and the name of the record company. And if there was any truth to Fenris’s bragging, about what they had been up to, then his release from here was not imminent. They were on the run.
He thought of the freaky old woman. Wondered about her.
Slow heavy feet boomed up the stairs. Broke his thoughts apart and into a rout.
He tensed. Looked about for a weapon. The jug was still in the room, on its side, intact; incredibly intact. And the bucket. He went for the jug, gripped its worn handle. Images of Fenris’s curved knife came into his mind and he shivered. He could not stop the shivers, or the trembling that took hold of his jaw.
‘Luke? It is Loki.’ No attempt was made by Loki to enter the room.
They were wary of him now. That’s good. Wary is good. They are just kids anyway. Fenris is a bull-shitter, a big mouth. They haven’t killed anyone.
Luke stood a few feet from the door and gave himself enough room to swing the jug. ‘Yeah.’
‘Good, you are listening.’
‘All ears.’
‘Of this I am very pleased, Luke. Because you need to listen very good. Yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tonight, you make a big mistake.’
‘I do?’
‘Yes you do, my friend, you do.’
‘He came at me with a knife. What am I supposed to do?’
‘If he wanted to kill you Luke, you would already be dead. You understand?’
‘Not really.’
Loki sighed. ‘Fenris has killed before. To him, killing is nothing. You see?’
Luke felt his skin go cold. Heat seemed to be draining away from his body through his own feet.
By an act of will, he forced the implications of what Loki had just said from his mind, and in much the same way that he had censored the vision of his knife-ruined flesh before. He had to keep holding himself all together or it was over. ‘When it is me he threatens, it means something to me, Loki. You understand that?’
‘He was not going to hurt you. He like you. Is glad you are here with us. He gets bored with me and Surtr. You see, me and Surtr are together and Fenris is the one left out. Yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘But now you have no friends here, Luke. You messed it up.’
‘He was no friend, Loki. And I’m no fool.’
Loki guffawed. ‘I never said you were, Luke. You want to survive. You fight. You are not weak. And I respect that. You are special. Which is why you survive and your friends die. Yes? Fenris was foolish to take his eye off you, that is all. But he learn a valuable lesson. I would prefer him not to know this lesson again, because now I have work to do. To be the peacemaker, yes?’
Luke stayed quiet. He found himself desperately trying not to like Loki.
‘Are you still with me, Luke?’
‘Yes!’
‘Good. But please you are guest, so do not shout. OK?’
‘OK.’
‘Thank you.’
‘My friends, Loki. Did you kill my friends?’
‘No we did not, Luke. I cannot tell you precisely what happened to them, but soon I wish to find out—’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Luke! It is I who is speaking. So listen to me. Now you must be careful and … how they say? Sleep light. Because someone in this house, not far from your bed, they very much want to kill you.’
‘You tell Fenris that I am sorry. I hit him because I thought he was going to hurt me. And I am very tired of being hurt, Loki. Can you understand that? My friends have been murdered and I want … I just want all of this to end.’
‘I understand, Luke. And it will all end soon.’
This statement made him mad with hope until he realized that Loki was probably talking about a completely different ending to his story.
‘But Fenris is not your problem,’ the deep-voiced giant said into the door. ‘He is mad at you, yes. He hoped you would be good company for him while you wait.’
‘Wait for what?’
‘I have not finished, Luke—’
‘What, Loki? What am I waiting for? Eh? The police. Because that is who will be coming very soon.’
‘I do not think so, Luke. Do not give yourself false hopes, my friend. You are far too important for us to give away to the police. And they are the last people we want to see. But I am sure they would like to meet us.’ Loki laughed to himself. Disingenuous, but deep laughter. ‘I tell you very soon, my friend. All in good times. But tonight’s party was for a very good reason. As you will soon see. But you must be patient a little while longer, Luke. Until then, you must understand what it is I am saying about your behaviour as a guest in this house.’
‘I am trying, Loki. I am trying very hard to understand why I am being kept here against my will.’
‘Your will is strong, Luke. But please let me tell you the problem you have right now. Yes?’
‘Yes. Yes. Yes. Tell me, Loki.’
‘When I say you have a very big problem in this house, I do not lie, Luke. But it is not Fenris. He has a sore head, but he don’t kill you. Your problem is Surtr, Luke.’
‘You keep your mad bitch away from me. OK, Loki? How’s that, mate?’
‘I will try my best, Luke. But I must sleep also. And she is very absolutist.’
‘I don’t follow?’
‘She likes to stab, Luke. To cut. She is a little crazy in her ideas. One time we got this guy and she … Well, let me make you imagine a man who tries to run with no toes on his feet. It was a very funny thing to see, I can tell you. And she never stop with his toes. All of him fits inside this … this … baggage. You know, the airport baggage?’
Luke thought he might be sick again. He needed to sit down. Tried to bring the strength back into his arms.
‘I think you understand me, Luke. So I ask a favour from you. You do as we say. Which mean, no more fighting, my friend. I leave you to think on this.’ His footsteps began to retreat down the corridor outside.
Luke moved to the door. ‘I need water. Loki. Water.’
The loud footsteps returned to the other side of the door. ‘I bring it.’
‘Hot water. A bandage.’
‘Not possible.’
‘Some painkillers. Headache tablets.’
‘Not possible.’
‘Cigarettes, please.’
‘Not possible.’
‘Tell you what, call an ambulance. Right now.’
‘Not possible,’ Loki said, without a trace of humour.
Wincing, as even the minutiae of limited mobility seemed to make his swo
llen brain collide painfully against the insides of his skull, Luke moved his body across the bedding to the side of the bed. Slowly, he hooked his legs over and then stood upright. Even with his head supported by both hands, he felt unbalanced, seasick.
He gulped at more of the stale dusty water, straight from the jug. It trickled round each side of his mouth and spattered down his naked chest. Besides his damp underwear, they had removed all of his clothes. He felt too ill and anxious to explore the reasons why. But there were no medical supplies here, and they were not going to let him go. Those were the new facts. The new rules binding his life. What was left of it.
A terrible bolus of emotion suddenly came up from behind his sternum where it had been stored in his worn-out heart. It rushed, burning, through him. He knelt on the floor. Bent over, sobbed.
His throat was thick with an emotion that could have been loneliness, or sadness, or self-pity, or despair, or all of these things at once. He didn’t know, but he thought anything, even death, was better than feeling this way.
He was hurting. So much. His head. He wanted it to stop. Would offer anything for a painkiller. Up and down his back, and around his calf muscles where thorns had curled and torn, the scratches shrieked with their own tiny voices. Even between his fingers there were cuts he could not recall the cause of.
He looked at the dirty swollen skin of his hands and forearms. And to think, he’d believed himself saved. His chest tightened and his skin pinpricked cold; the sensation felt horribly familiar.
Lying on the wooden floor, he curled into himself, held his broken head, and quietly wept until he was exhausted by the effort of producing tears.
FIFTY-FIVE
After the sobbing of Surtr finally ceased downstairs, Luke rested on top of the musty eiderdown and listened to the night. Dry blood stiffened and cracked upon his face. There were no electric lights inside the room. No power sockets. No electricity. So when the world outside went dark, so did the room, and the house around it. The coastal sounds of the trees swished near the house, but rose in deeper longer waves further out, stirred by the first strong wind he could remember since he’d arrived in Sweden.
He listened to the wind until a new commotion of footsteps came up the stairs. He assumed it was the youths and the old woman, rising to murder him. Luke tensed, stopped breathing.
Someone banged about in a room further down the corridor outside of his room – maybe two sets of feet – and then a door closed on those sounds. Other sets of feet shuffled and bumped downstairs, on the ground floor, but to destinations in other parts of the building.
He sucked in his breath, relaxed back into the mattress. His captors must have been going to their beds to sleep; some of them had gone into a room on this storey of the house. He sensed that it was a large building; it creaked and yawned like an old sailing ship, and he could hear the adjustments of its timbers in the distance. Sometimes he thought he could feel the floor under the bed moving too. He doubted the building was structurally safe.
Eventually, despite the headache and nausea, he fell into a coma of exhaustion.
To wake from a disorientating dream that involved him turning round and round and looking at a moon-white sky. Something had broken him from sleep. Noises. Above his room.
It must have been well after midnight. It was pitch-black outside and the sky through his little window had not yet begun to lighten for dawn.
But floorboards of a room directly above the ceiling of his room were creaking. And there was a faint bumping up there too. No scratching like the activity of mice or birds, but the shifting sounds of motion from a more substantial presence. Or presences.
Yes, he became sure that something, bigger than a dog or cat, was on the move upstairs, fumbling about. The pattern of movement brought to his imagination the image of several small children, blind and stumbling round the walls of an enclosed space, looking for a way out. He pushed the image from his thoughts. It was not the kind of thing he wanted to think about on his own in the dark.
Gingerly, he edged himself off the bed. The floor emitted a loud and lasting crack. Up above him all fell silent. He paused, held his breath and strained his ears for a few seconds. Then trod carefully upon the floor again. The silence of night amplified his movements as if through loud speakers.
He swore silently. The house was listening. The darkness was following him.
Nothing was moving above him now, but its presence still conveyed the sense that whoever it was had begun to listen intently to his movements.
He started to panic. Whimpered. He needed to act. To do something. Now.
At the window, he quickly moved his hands around the frame, then the glass. Could see nothing through it. The stars and moon were blotted out by cloud. The window was definitely too small to crawl through if he punched the glass out. His shoulders would not fit. The drop would snap an ankle anyway, maybe two. He shuddered. No more pain. Please.
Testing sections of the floor before he gave them his full weight, he moved unevenly across the room to the door. Pressed himself against it, felt its contours with the palms of his hands, turned its handle uselessly, implored it to have a flaw that would allow him to leave. But the door was solid. An old thing, not a moulding, no hardboard involved in its construction. He scratched at the thick hinges. He’d need a crowbar to get this bastard out of the frame.
On his hands and knees, he moved about the floor. Using the tips of his fingers, he picked at the spaces between the gappy floorboards, wanting to break through them with his bare hands. Puffs of cold air and dust came up at him, silent exhalations from the building’s internal air currents. Beneath his hands, the floor was like the door: solid, ancient. He picked and pried, dirtied his already dirty knees. He gritted his teeth and silently called down curses upon the place.
Upright again, he then moved about the walls, shuffling his feet. The plaster was moist in places; powdery under the paintwork in other areas. He wondered if he might dig through the wall at one of these weak points with a shard of the broken jug or bucket. He was giving it serious thought when the activity above his head interrupted his considerations.
Voices.
Whispering voices.
Thump, bump, thump: the sounds of small bodies.
He moved into the middle of the room, at the foot of the bed, and something up there followed him. A pattering of babyish feet tracked across the ceiling to where he stood. Directly above him.
Luke moved towards the window. The little footsteps followed.
‘Hello,’ Luke said.
Silence.
Louder this time. ‘Hello.’
No reply.
‘Can you hear me?’
No one answered, but he was sure that a second tangible presence above him was attracted to the sound of his voice. Because another small form was now being dragged, or was dragging itself across the floor above. It could have been no bigger than a child, because the shuffling sound was so light, so delicate. It bore no weight, but merely scuffed at the old floorboards.
There was more whispering now too. Several papery voices were rustling up there. He could not make out a single word, but perhaps a note of optimism now defined their tone.
This summoned a third participant. Up there. From the far corner of his room, he heard another set of steps move across the ceiling, towards his position beside the window. But this figure was moving incredibly slowly, as if every step was a terrible effort. The sound of the footsteps was also hard, hollow and woody, as if this individual was wearing shoes with tipped heels, or was using crutches. It was more of a slow careful knocking than a skitter or dragging motion like the first two presences had made.
‘I can hear you. English? Do you speak English?’ he called out, softly.
The whispering intensified, then died away.
Silence.
This was going nowhere. Who did they have up there? Children? He thought of Fred and Rose West’s house in Gloucester, of the entombed captives suff
ocated in the walls. Recalled bits of what he knew about the degradation of the victims of degenerate killers. Dharma, Manson, the Green River Killer, Brady, Nielsen, the Night Prowler, and all of the stranglers and slashers with their hall of fame on cable television. He thought of their victims kept captive, toyed with, despatched, even fucked, often eaten. These thoughts made him feel so weak, he thought he should sit down.
Then he clenched his fists, ground his teeth. Wanted to bellow at the impossibility, the absurdity, the unfairness of it. There was simply no preparation in life for the determined madness of others.
Realizing he had either been holding his breath, or taking shallow breaths since hearing the movements above him, he greedily sucked the musty air of the room into his lungs. And shivered. It was so cold now. His feet were frozen; he wondered if they had gone blue. He became angry again because he had no clothes. Maybe his clothes were in a terrible state, or maybe his disrobement was a tactic.
He touched the tacky furrow that ran across the top of his skull. It feels worse than it is, he told himself, but wasn’t sure whether he believed this.
He made his way towards the vague outline of the box bed. A little rest and warm-up and he’d be in a better place to deal with this, with them. Tomorrow, he would have to make his play.
The thought made him sickly and strengthless again, and he vainly wished he had not struck Fenris. They’d be on their guard now. But he had to do something. Maybe dig at that plaster first. Yes, take a rest, then break that jug with the bucket, as quietly as possible inside the bedclothes. Start carving the plaster while Blood Frenzy slept off their moonshine and frolics. They were going to kill him anyway. Fucking up the wall was the least of his worries.
He sat down on the bed. Gaped into space. Kill him anyway. He wondered how it would feel to die. Maybe just darkness came after.
Up above his head all was quiet again, but he imagined that whoever was up there was now listening to his thoughts.
Luke lay back. The bed stank like a farm animal, but at least it was warm.
