And he was afraid of the forgotten things that might clamber up if he allowed Sarah to ask questions. He had to be empty to do what he did. The past was gone. The future was unknown. He could only survive in the present.
He stopped mid-step, eyes wide, before dropping to the ground and crouching, holding his breath.
Torchlight hovered in the mid-distance. He had been moving towards it as though it was the north star. Now, he flattened himself against the ground and the light washed in his direction. Head to one side, eyes open, he saw it sweep past him, then back. Lungs burning, he drew a very slow breath, knowing that he wouldn't be able to breathe out again without giving a signalling plume of vapour. He remained perfectly still on the damp earth as the light settled beside him. He closed his eyes for a moment, working to regain control of his desire to see more clearly and his desire to run. His heartbeat thumped in his ears.
Someone was looking for him or the French woman.
Perhaps, he thought, this person had seen him last night and had returned in the safety afforded by 24 hours. Or perhaps it was someone following the tracks, looking for evidence. Finding it. He'd been sloppy. He'd been exhausted. He'd been high. Twenty Questions.
He opened his eyes again when, in the distance, he heard a snort and saw that the torch bearer had given up on training the light in his direction and was now facing the other way, so that it created a halo, revealing a male figure, sitting on the ground, his elbows resting on his knees. The man was not crying but weeping. He had a coughing fit through the tears and wiped his face with his fists. He growled at himself in anger and thumped the ground, stamped a foot.
Simon didn't imagine that this was the boyfriend. The father perhaps. He wondered if this man had seen what he had done last night but had been powerless or too afraid to stop it, and had returned here, like him, to reignite his grief and have it soar. His cries went up, promising minute relief but ultimately falling dead among the branches. He sat in the middle, suffering, his breath hitching, waiting it out.
Every sound the man made caused Simon to wince. He could feel his throat burning, as though he was going to cry, but he didn't dare lose control.
The man's grief seemed both old and new, as if he was unhappy for many reasons, which were presenting themselves to him in a dismal procession.
If this was the French girl's father, Simon admitted, then he had robbed the man of the one thing that was keeping him alive.
He wished that he hadn't come back and seen this. He knew that he could have gone anywhere to ponder his actions and come to terms with what he had done, but Sarah's questioning had driven him toward the extra flagellation that returning to the cliff would afford him. As good as he was at burying his emotions, this night would keep him in nightmares for the rest of his life.
*
Twenty more paces would have brought Simon to the edge and that was where the man had stopped, swinging his big head left and right, gazing down into the tumultuous waves. He was portly and ungainly, like a PE teacher he had once had, and he was wearing a short, waxy jacket that hissed when he moved.
Simon wondered if the man was working himself up to jump and again he felt contradictory urges: the muscles of his legs tensed, ready to spring from his hiding place and haul him back, because he had sent too many people into the unknown to watch it happen again without the demand of the Creature and yet any attempt to save him would mean giving himself away.
Suicide or not, the man's presence here posed questions that were becoming increasingly intolerable. The torch had fallen from his fingers and lay at his feet spilling light through fallen branches; a gust of wind tussled his hair and no other part of him moved. He didn't even appear to be breathing and Simon knew that it wouldn't be long before he toppled over the edge like a domino.
Terrified and surprised by himself, Simon found that he was drifting forward to stop him when the man bent down for his torch, groaned and, contrary to Simon's expectations, turned to retrace his steps through the forest.
Simon crouched, ready to defend himself, but while the man passed nearby, he continued into darkness, back towards the road, torch light fading.
Simon followed.
Near the cliff, where the ground had been damp, Simon had moved quietly, but now, despite his best efforts, dry leaves and twigs crunched underfoot, obvious to his ears. A small branch snapped and he cursed to himself, ducking, but the man ahead kept moving, making a racket himself and even tripping and falling a couple of times in his hurry to get out of the trees. Simon walked as quickly as he dared, determined to keep up; almost failing.
As the man reached the tarmac road, Simon was forced to stop because any noise now would give him away. The man walked up the hill and retrieved keys from his trouser pocket. A white Micra was parked on the verge up ahead and Simon knew that as soon as the man reached it, this episode would be over, without answers but, perhaps more importantly, without being seen. He had done his best. Now it was time to let go.
He had successfully kept a low profile over the last couple of years and had been lucky too, even passing undetected on the one occasion he had been stopped by police for speeding, so why in the hell was he now stumbling out of the forest and saying:
“Hi.”
The man turned as if yanked by a rope. His smart trousers and sensible, nylon jacket bore the marks of his venture into the woods, but nothing more so than his leather shoes, which were caked with mud. His hair was greasy, abandoned. His eyes, terrified, gave away the fact that whatever he had been doing in the woods, it was a guilty secret. He watched, dumbstruck as Simon descended the bank and moved towards him over the road.
“I saw you,” Simon said, with deliberate ambiguity.
The man's face slackened, but his eyes hardened. Simon assumed that he was making calculations, despite his apparent shock. The fight or flight response, but in slow-motion.
“What do you want?” the man asked.
Good question. He hadn't really had time to think about it.
“I heard you,” Simon said. “Are you ok?”
“Fine. Goodbye.”
Simon kept coming and the man stepped back, stumbling again. He seemed to be slurring his words.
“Why here?” Simon said. “Why this place?”
The man shrugged.
“Have you lost something?”
“Everything,” he said. And then: “Haven't we all?” It was the first thing he said that didn't seem to have been calculated, and he didn't regret his spontaneity; he was angry. Simon, on the other hand, was now having second thoughts. Since he had shown his face to this man, here where he had delivered the French girl, he couldn't let him leave. Perhaps it would have been better for him to have lived with the curiosity and anxiety than to kill, particularly as he had not been selected by the Creature. Wrong place. Wrong time. For both of them.
It might have sounded like a normal exhalation, but in fact it was a sigh; having decided to kill him, Simon became more bold.
“Why were you in the trees?”
The man sensed the shift in his tone and stood staring down at him for almost a minute. He clenched and unclenched big fists, struggling to remain calm. Seeing that Simon was implacable, he said very clearly:
“Let’s not make this worse than it needs to be. I’m walking away.”
“Tell me,” Simon said.
The man only shrugged. “You've decided that you have to kill me,” he said, “so what benefit is it to me if I tell you? You're not a torturer. So I'll take my chances.”
After all the pleas for help he had heard over the months, insane bargains, impossible promises and lies, no-one had ever spoken to him this coolly in such circumstances. His manner was detached, as though he didn't much care about survival and he found this experience sad not frightening.
“This doesn't have to be unpleasant,” Simon said. “Maybe we can make a deal.”
“You don't have anything to barga
in with. I don't care what you've seen or what you know or what you think you know. I've seen it all.”
“Who are you?”
“I'm the one who's holding all the cards. And if someone like me has all the cards, what does that say about you, you dipshit? Go home,” he said. “Tell Sarah you love her. Make her understand. Something's coming. Make sure she understands. This is the warning I never had.”
The man turned, heading to his car without a look back. Simon demanded his name, but he had been right, he didn't have anything to barter with. The man had known Sarah's name and yet was completely unknown to Simon. There was little he could do but watch him crunch the stones at the side of the road, open up his door and get inside.
Make her understand.
This is the warning I never had.
The Micra's engine brought Simon round. He started towards the car, but skidded on the gravel, falling to his hands and knees.
“Wait!”
The car pulled away, bathing Simon in red light.
Chapter Five
The chicken was burnt. Sarah glugged down half a glass of white wine, refilled it and then settled down to eat dinner on her lap beside her brother.
On the television screen, giant spiders spilled from fast food containers and shoeboxes, from under the bed and out of coffee cups, ultimately clambering over cars and hedges, over people’s faces, spinning webs the size of parasols between tree branches.
Simon would normally have been halfway through his meal by the time Sarah sat down, but instead he chewed mechanically, thinking of the man by the cliff.
Make her understand.
This is the warning I never had.
He glanced across at her. She had pried a small bone from a drumstick and was stripping it with her front teeth. She worked quickly, but gave up on it when it got difficult, discarding it on the edge of the plate and moving on to the next.
“Are you really watching this?” Sarah asked. Simon nodded, his mind far, far from home. “Can we talk now? About mum and dad.”
He was desperate to stall, not least of all because his attempt to clear his head had made him more anxious. Echoing and burbling with almost forgotten voices, he wanted to throw himself down and drown amongst them.
“Was it really suicide?” Sarah asked. She assumed he had all the answers. Until a couple of hours ago, he could almost have believed that it was true.
The cavern yawned and his memory of their father's disappearance snatched a breath.
His father had told him to look after his sister and then walked out of the front door, leaving his keys on the hook. He had been the last person to see him. His father hadn't seemed under duress. He had been relaxed. Even relieved.
“You'll be alright,” he had said with a pat on his shoulder and then he was gone without a look back.
Sarah discarded her meal on the table in front of them.
Simon opened his mouth to speak, not yet knowing what he was going to say, but as he did so he felt the familiar squeezing sensation at the nape of his neck, like a thumb and forefinger probing and then pinching. He arched his back slightly as the shockwave ran down his spine.
As the Creature made its presence felt within him, he focussed his mind on his breathing, letting go of his personality, and his whirling thoughts, letting the prospect of a tricky conversation about their dead father to slip away. As the Creature took up residence, Simon allowed himself to become empty. He had to become the servant again. The vessel.
So soon?
He could feel the nefarious sensation of the thing working its way into position. He felt its 'fingers' climbing his vertebra, pressing on his skull, through, tapping inside his brain, searching out the familiar pathways.
“Simon?”
Rather than being displaced as one might expect, he felt more vital than ever. The Creature could see what he could see and it could express its pleasure or otherwise, but he remained in control. He rocked gently with the adrenaline rush and attempted to stay calm.
The old, worn cushions cradled the sore muscles of his back. The tray, warmed by the plate, was a comfortable weight on his lap, breathing with him. His skin buzzed pleasurably, wetly, in the cool air.
He saw the worry lines of Sarah's forehead, ridges in sandstone. Her hair no longer appeared to be a jumble of dirty-blonde curls; each strand had its purpose and place within an overarching pattern, not reminiscent of dead cells at all, but of a substance that effectively caught and reflected the light so it appeared that they radiated light of their own. Her eyes, chestnut brown with fiery flecks of amber, like his, glistened with tears.
She was disappointed and he wouldn't comfort her. The Creature's consciousness swelled within him, its gossamer tendrils stiffening, announcing its desire for yet another delivery. It took up position within him so swiftly that he didn't have time to prepare for the night's work ahead. He continued to focus on his breathing, but couldn't help a stab of anxiety.
Even serial killers at their most prolific did not often take people as frequently as he had done in the last two months. When killers picked up their pace like this, they left objects behind, they were seen, people made connections. He knew he was likely to get caught soon. It would seem that the man he followed last night had already been following him. Everything was going to shit. Fast.
The growing presence of the Creature, however, was a drug, and gradually, he began to feel invincible, knowing that It would steer him around the danger. He felt he could handle anything, which was useful, because anything could happen.
He turned to his sister to make an excuse to leave, but he felt the squeeze in his skull the moment he looked at her. He immediately turned away, but there was no denying what had happened. The sensation had been sharp and definite.
He looked at her again. She was attempting to keep her emotions in check, as was he.
Squeeze.
There was no time for explanations or goodbyes.
The Creature had chosen her and now he had a job to do.
Chapter Six
“We're going out,” said Simon, tempering a headache that would cripple him if he didn't act on the Creature's instruction. He stood. “Now.”
Sarah looked at her plate, meal not even half-finished, and then back at him.
“Dessert,” he said. “I've had enough of that microwave. I want to buy something before the shop closes.”
“That,” she said, “is the most pathetic lie I've ever heard. You're still avoiding talking to me. You'll do anything, won't you?”
“I'm not avoiding you,” he said. “You're coming with me. Get your warm coat.”
“We’re taking your car, right?”
“Warm … coat ...” Simon said.
Her bare feet thudded against the carpeted stairs, hitting the ones that squeaked and the ones that didn't indiscriminately. The sound got smaller and smaller and then he heard her open her wardrobe door, followed by the clack and clang of hangers. Within moments, she was running back down the stairs in trainers. Over one arm was the dark green army jacket he had requested she wear.
“Okay,” she said, hopping down the last step. “Let's get this over with.”
“... Put it on then,” Simon said.
“I'll look like a div,” she replied. She hadn’t worn the coat since Simon had given it to her. It was all pockets and straps and scuffed, metal poppers. It had a detachable hood and a worn tag that said it was authentic, as used by the UK military. “I know you wear these, but ...” Although it was chilly out, it was still technically summer. Technically, she’d look like a div. She pouted in defiance. “Can't I just carry it? … Okay, okay, I'll wear it.”
In the car, she made a point of fiddling with the windows and the fan before even reaching for the seat belt. When she did, Simon said:
“I wouldn’t bother with that if I was you, Rabbit,” and set about adjusting the rear view mirror.
She let the seatbelt go
and it clunked back into its place behind her left shoulder. She sat absolutely still.
She had been stupid to grab her coat and come back downstairs. That had been her opportunity to escape. 'Warm coat' was her signal to run and she had missed it. 'Rabbit' confirmed that she was now in deep shit.
Or was she? Maybe she should call his bluff.
She felt weak when she glanced at Simon’s face. She saw no emotion. No life. They were not going out for cake.
Only the hope that this might be a drill prevented her from babbling at him, as she had no intention of being chased down by him, by her own brother. She would rather die here and now.
Eyes shut tight, she tried not to cry. She had behaved stupidly, not once, but twice, so absorbed by her thoughts and her need for answers that she hadn't seen the change come over him.
When she opened her eyes, the car was eating up white lines. Simon looked dead ahead, focusing outwards.
If this is a test, she thought, what does Simon expect of me? They were driving too quickly for her to grab the wheel without killing them. Maybe that was what he wanted. She glanced at him again for some kind of hint, but he communicated nothing. He had become the automaton.
As if she needed more evidence that something was wrong, they drove past the local shop, which was still open, without slowing. Simon took a corner in fourth gear and Sarah's stomach turned.
The road descended steeply, flanked by trees on either side whose branches locked fingers overhead. They rocketed down the hill.
If she was going to stop this, she had to do it now. At the current speed, her options seemed to be injury or death and, considering that Simon had contingency plans for every eventuality, she ascertained that this must be the plan.
Now’s my chance, she thought. Grab the wheel. Roll the car …
It was one thing to think it and another to reach across, take the cold leather of the steering wheel and pull.
“Gum,” Simon demanded, breaking her mental loop. His eyes remained on the road.
“What? Where?”
“In your pocket,” Simon said, as though talking to a child.
In the inside pocket of the div jacket, she found a pack of spearmint chewing gum, along with an index card. She dropped two tablets of gum into Simon’s outstretched hand, afraid to touch him, and then she shrank back to read the card, which she was able to do quickly, because it had only one word written on it, in thick, black, marker pen letters.
The Hollow Places - A Paranormal Suspense Thriller Page 3
