Lost Girl

by Nevill, Adam

  One set of footsteps retreated across the cement floor.

  Two shots struck the air, followed by a sudden bang against wood. A heavy thump completed the interlude.

  A rustle of clothing behind him suggested hurried movements, complemented by a hissing exhalation.

  A short snap of rapid shots slapped again, from the direction of the first salvo, producing a faint echo off the cement walls.

  From behind issued the sound of a man surprised, close to his ear. That noise was followed by a deep grunt. Someone rustled and then smacked, fleshily, against the floor behind where the father crouched.

  Some words in a foreign language were muttered quietly.

  Silence.

  Eventually the father moved. Turned his head and looked behind himself. One of the Kings, the one wearing a leather jacket, was sprawled upon the grey floor. The father raised his head to better see through the semi-darkness, the space only lit by the grey light that fell through the door and solitary window set in the gable above it. Salt on his face cracked as the father noticed the second man propped against a wall near the door; his masked face glistened blackly and appeared to smoke. They had both been shot dead: his captors, his executioners.

  ‘You could not do this on your own. I told you this.’ Already deep inside the room, Oleg Chorny leaned against a wall on the father’s left side, a pale, thin silhouette that grinned horribly. He cradled the assault rifle the father had seen in the tool bag. ‘I took care of the bitch’s bodyguard too, outside, then these two.’ Oleg spat in the direction of one corpse. ‘The bitch and her boyfriend didn’t want to watch you die, so they scattered like little birds into their house. I think I will leave one of them for you. The fool. But the bitch, I am very sorry to say, is mine. On this there is no negotiation. She paid for Simmy to be killed, and she will be my final sign. Your girl is alive and you will get her back today, so I think my argument wins.’

  The father swallowed and looked again at the dead man behind him. ‘Why?’

  A quick grimace of pain stiffened the skull mask in the shadows. It looked at the ceiling and seemed to spit this time to expel pain. ‘You think I do not know loss? Maybe Simmy and I were not as free of who we once were as we had hoped. It is not unusual to be used and killed in this life. We knew this.’ He turned to the father as he came away from the wall. ‘But are lovers to be denied revenge? Is this the sole right of fathers? You came for the purpose of your vengeance, but you came to deliver mine also. Think on this, neither of us could have done this alone. What walks beside us, in the confinement of our signs, brought us together. Did we both not offer everything for our revenge? Are we not the same, you and I? Do we not forsake ourselves for the ones we love but have lost? We have crawled around hellmouth for two years. Powerful magic, my Red Father. In another place, we have been incandescent.’

  For a while the father stayed silent, too shocked, relieved, and bewildered to speak. The true question that emerged was no longer who stood before him, but what? He could not allow himself to believe Oleg. His theory was delusional and impossible, as was the idea that this man, who had just saved his life, could retire from life, and yet return at will; rising from the dead for the purpose of his own vengeance. But nor could he explain how Oleg had known about him and foreseen his arrival at that hellish chapel. What Oleg had said about the patrons of afterdeath he would not allow himself to believe.

  A cooling of his flesh accompanied a new revelation: Oleg could kill him now, and his wife. Once his revenge on Karen had been sated, what then? Oleg could close this old account completely, and kill him, his wife, and his daughter. Isn’t that what they did, murder indiscriminately to cover their tracks? It was in their very nature. The man was also deranged, and he’d never met any living thing as dangerous as Oleg Chorny. In fact, Oleg might have killed him at any time during his captivity, as he’d freed himself to get here. When writhing for a fix, if he’d the means to remove his bonds all along, then Oleg’s self-restraint must have been enormous. ‘You got free.’

  Oleg tittered. ‘Do you think I would ever sleep without a tool in my arse? Prison taught me many things. But I wonder, do I have to kill you now, or can we put our disagreement aside until this ritual is finished and our alignment is washed away in blood? I’m afraid our little ritual will require a final sign, if I am to be embraced within that terrible passage. And I think you would rather I make my offering with the blood of the bitch, and her fool, than with yours . . . and your wife’s.’

  The father looked at the machete in the dead man’s hand, the fingers blackened by the tattoo ink of a mortuary roll. ‘Agreed.’

  ‘Good. And you have seen the girl?’

  The father nodded.

  ‘Then we will collect her after we have concluded our business here, together. Today we end the confinement that binds us.’ Oleg smiled. ‘We sever it.’

  An elation to still be breathing, and so close to his daughter, tried to rise from the father’s heart, but Chorny’s use of the word ‘sever’ seemed to now echo within his skull, as did this talk of blood and sacrifice. He had no choice other than to follow the man’s lead, and to play along with his mystical delusions.

  Penny.

  The dark room and his long-in-shadow mind filled with an unstable light, and such was the inconceivability of his daughter ever being found, he understood his journey to this place had only ever been navigated by hatred’s molten core. He was truly confined, but not in the way Oleg espoused; he was trapped by his own murderous madness, from which he’d long stopped believing that any escape was possible. Vengeance had inadequately prepared him for what came next.

  What to do?

  Doubts bustled, thoughts became insects in smoke, frantic, then sluggish. Where hatred and rage and misery had combusted for so long, he now weakened at the idea that his own daughter would no longer recognize him, and he could barely remember who he had been two years before either. And despite the timeless malevolence of Karen Perucchi, and the casual cunning of her partner, what they had said about the virus now stirred his greatest unease. If what they claimed was true, and they would have commanded a far better insight into a pandemic than anyone watching the news, then how could he protect his daughter from the chaos that was coming?

  There was no way he could care for his daughter. She had spent two years with imposters who had treated her to a cosseted existence of plenty and luxury, as the rich did with their own. She had been vaccinated. He had not. If he and Miranda became sick, Penny would be lost again, but lost out there as things fell apart, amongst . . . Without him she would be taken by other strangers. He could not bear to imagine that. So cruel was the world that for his daughter to have any chance of survival, it would have been better for him to have died in this empty room, to have been bundled headless inside a rubber bag and buried in the woods.

  A little money, a stolen car and a bag of guns, but no home to feel safe within if they were to be pursued by the killers of the King Death organization, and the Kings would kill them as soon as they found them. They would probably kill his little girl too, or do something even worse. And he was a murderer, wanted by the police. As bad a father as could be imagined, though he had done everything for love.

  Her mother was broken and had been for two years. Could even the reappearance of Penny put her back together?

  ‘Dear God.’ He bent over until his face was a few inches from the top of his naked thighs. And what slowed the blood in his veins, until it appeared to stop moving altogether, was the inexorable acknowledgement that Penny probably considered Karen Perucchi to be her mother.

  ‘For now we will put your wife in one of their cars.’ Oleg knelt down, felt Miranda’s throat for a pulse, and nodded. ‘They gave her something strong. But you can rouse her later when our work is finished. I think that will be for the best, don’t you? I think it better she never sees the Red Father at his work.’ Oleg smiled. ‘I will cut your bonds and give you a weapon. But I think you will walk in f
ront of me, mmm?’

  As Oleg sawed his tortured, half-numb limbs free, the father raised his tear-stained face to confront his rescuer, the man who first turned this wheel and set everything in motion two years before. ‘There is a virus. A pandemic.’

  ‘For sure. And I have seen its reign foretold. It will be as it is depicted upon my walls. Did you not tarry a while in my gallery? I heard them talking to you this morning too. And the fool did not lie to you. But they only understand this in one way. Virus, pandemic . . .’ Oleg smiled, shrugging. ‘There are other meanings in another place, which you resist. An unfortunate scepticism. To see the world in another way is to lose your fear.’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘I cannot waste any more time trying to convince you of what you cannot deny, but there is another here with me. Close to me. Close to you. Today. The one who has watched me since I first trespassed into that terrible passage with Simmy. The one that is between the signs with us, the signs that brought us together. And our energy here has been irresistible to the patron, so it is now very close.’ Oleg nodded at the dead gang member. ‘I have already made a start on those things that shine so brightly, over there.’

  The father ignored Oleg Chorny’s rambling. ‘My daughter . . . they said there is a drug. They said she was vaccinated. She has a good chance . . . I can’t . . .’

  The man angled his head to one side, inquisitive, surprised even. ‘You doubt yourself?’ Oleg then looked upon the father with pity. ‘Interesting. But I think they will have this drug here, somewhere. For you and your wife we will find it. We will make them give it to us. Now, move.’

  The father tried to stand. The foot that felt strange and hot did not support his weight and he fell onto his side. The cold of the concrete against his bare skin sobered him enough to curse.

  Oleg nodded at the body behind the father. ‘Maybe this piece of shit is your size. Put his clothes on.’

  The father rose to one elbow and eyed the corpse with horror.

  ‘You go to your girl in pissed pants? Better to wear the clothes of a dead man. Get up. You waste time.’

  The father scavenged the clothes from the still-warm but cooling body. They stank of his would-be executioner’s sweat. He limped about, both feet shod in drying blood, one foot tingling but mostly disembodied, the second foot only aching, and he yanked on the jeans, the hooded top and leather jacket. Then he slumped beside Miranda and felt the faint warmth of her cheeks, her hands, and kissed her forehead. ‘I’m bringing her back, soon,’ he whispered.

  Oleg let his rifle hang on its sling while he emptied the pockets of the other corpse’s jacket. ‘Turkish. Bastard.’

  After the father had mangled his feet into his own boots, Oleg said, ‘We go and put your wife in the car.’

  ‘What then?’

  As if happily making a simple choice from a menu, Oleg rolled his eyes, smiling. ‘I have already told you. They have to go now. Two candles must be lit in the window. Put your mind to that task first, and no other.’

  The father thought of the well-heeled, self-satisfied couple and how they had so recently gloated. Yasmin. Our daughter. He clenched his jaw. Karen Perucchi was about to lose everything, and lose far more than she had taken from him. He nodded his assent. ‘Karen is yours.’ And he swore to himself that Karen’s fiancé would be the last person he ever killed.

  ‘No,’ Oleg said, grinning, as if the father had spoken out loud. ‘There will be other fights, Red Father. This is only a beginning of your awakening. Getting your girl back was the easy part. In a time of warlords and chaos, hell awaits you all, and soon. But at least you are prepared now. Never hesitate.’

  Stunned, still wondering if he were so broken that he could not tell which of them was the least stable, the father said, ‘My daughter . . . She cannot see . . . what we are about to do. She will think they are . . . her parents.’ He spat on the floor as if the words were caustic.

  Oleg’s hateful face grinned. ‘What do you think I am?’

  ‘You’re so fucked up I have no idea who you are, or what you will do.’

  Oleg Chorny found this amusing. ‘Now you understand me better. But I tell you this, I took a kid from a person for money, for sure.’ He shrugged. ‘From strangers. A long time ago. And for this my lover died. For this I was to die also. You think I have not paid some price too? You think I matter, or that you do? Does anyone matter? You, me, your girl? Have we not all learned this the hard way? How many lessons do you need, Red Father? We must stop feeling in the world that is coming. Life, love, whatever, all of these things must go. I have seen inside the machine, the body, of what walks beside us. And this body is black and cold and terrible. It cares not for us, Red Father. Afterdeath was there before existence, and it breathes heavily upon life once more, waiting for our return.’ With the end of his gun, Oleg prodded the father towards his wife. ‘Come. We carry her out. Then we go to the false mother.’

  ‘My gun.’

  ‘Patience.’

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Outside in the rain, out of sight of the windows of the main house, Oleg surprised the father again by returning the two handguns he had carried to the house. ‘These I know you can use.’

  Hands trembling, the father took them.

  ‘We go to them now. Already they will be thinking that maybe this morning is going wrong for them. Soon they will call their local security. Maybe as they shit their pants they have already made the call, who knows? And there are patrols, maybe more than usual because of the storm and Kashmir. We don’t want to shoot our way out.’

  The father swallowed, checked his weapons. The handguns had become dead weights. ‘Wait. The vaccine, we have to make sure, before . . . They were all inoculated here. My daughter won’t stand a chance out there unless me and her mother have it too . . . otherwise, I can’t . . . how could I take her into that?’

  ‘To get this far and not take her? But if it is here, they will give it up for sure. Relax.’

  The father scrutinized Oleg’s face for a flicker of deceit. He could feel one of his eyelids twitching from the nervousness and fear that made him want to throw up. ‘Let’s say they do have it, what then? What will you do, after?’

  ‘I shoot up with something nice myself too. And then we part ways.’ The man smiled, sadly, and he swept his gaze across the building and the pool. ‘I like this place. Once, I would have waited here for things to settle, out there.’ He nodded at the fence. ‘These people had a good plan. And I would listen and I would know what would be required next. Only then would I open the gate.’ He touched a wall as if surveying its size and said to himself, ‘But my work is almost done.’

  Mystified, the father continued to stare at the man, and infuriatingly he still awaited a straight answer. But Oleg merely pulled one of the dead Kings’ Balaclavas over his head, and indicated that the father should do the same with the second mask. ‘Crown yourself, Red Father. They see us come to the house on camera and they will think we are Kings. Come. You first.’

  Still wearing his surgical mask and gloves, Karen’s fiancé waited in the vast living room. Fully dressed now, he quickly rose from the white leather sofa and nodded gravely, as if he too had performed terrible and dark deeds in a garage that morning. ‘Coffee? Or something stronger?’ he said in the chummy tone, but one barely bolstered by a superficial confidence. ‘We’ve—’

  Oleg never gave the man time to finish the sentence, cutting him off by pushing the end of the assault rifle under his soft jaw. ‘We go get the vaccine for the bug. This you can share.’

  The man’s eyes widened with fear and the flesh around the surgical mask became bloodless. ‘I don’t . . . Of course. We agreed . . .’ And then he realized he was not speaking to either of the two men who had arrived at his home the night before, with an unconscious woman in tow.

  Oleg ripped away the man’s surgical mask and glasses. Kissed his mouth hard, using his tongue, then turned him around quickly. ‘Your bitch, Karen, soon you will call her out he
re. But you will call her like normal, or I will fuck you in the arse with my gun and shoot out your lungs, mmm? But first you show us the drugs. Then we make a call to Karen, but not for the little girl. She best stay in her room. All very simple. You understand me, mmm?’

  Karen’s fiancé spluttered, his legs as unsteady as those of an old man on ice. He wet himself too as his legs gave way. ‘Please . . .’ His voice was nothing more than a whispery squeal. Oleg pulled him from the floor, effortlessly, and removed a small handgun from the man’s jacket and tucked it inside his own trouser pocket. Through the eyehole of his Balaclava he winked at the father.

  The father looked around the room, holding a handgun at his side, his throat closed, his heart now walloping with relief that the vaccine was onsite, while the prospect of seeing his daughter made him giddy. And then his skin chilled as he again tried to guess Oleg’s real intentions. The man was insane, but functioning, and at a speed and level that he could not keep pace with. And yet his deepest and most profound instincts suggested that trying to shoot Oleg would be his and his family’s final mistake. The painted man danced through his imagination. Unwelcome recollections of his dreams, and of the chapel, made the father quiver, while the persistent suspicion that Oleg Chorny was no longer entirely human would not abate.

  Oleg began to whisper encouragement to Karen’s fiancé. The man said his name was Richard, but Richard could barely walk as they led him from the entertaining area. When he eventually recovered his voice, the father could hear the man’s piteous attempts at negotiation. Offers of money were made, good sums too, offers of vaccines for their families, their friends, ‘anyone really’, and claims of his innocence in the matter of the kidnap.

  The father saw excitement in Oleg’s devil eyes, which rolled white and insolent in the holes of the mask, and he could not look at them for long. Oleg continued to cluck and coo horribly, a camp skeleton, encouraging the man to talk, while obviously delighting at the prospect of the coming slaughter.