Night By Night

by Jack Jordan

  I’m scared. Please help me. Please don’t hate me.

  She looked at him intently. Her eyes were genuine, but there was an impatient shift in her body. She wanted to get ready in peace; he was invading her time.

  ‘I’m going to have a bath,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be too long, I need to shower before I go out.’

  He nodded, swallowed the words down, and closed the door behind him.

  Jay stood on the landing and listened to the house: the music from Rose’s room, the clatter of a pot from the kitchen, the laughter from a televised audience drifting up the stairs. He wondered what it was like to live without fear.

  Stepping inside the bathroom, he turned on the taps. The sound of the water masked everything else in the house but the faint beat of Rose’s music. He stripped off his clothes and sat on the toilet seat, silent tears streaming down his face. He had never felt more alone.

  He turned off the taps and lowered himself into the bath, enjoying the sting of the water that reminded him he was alive. He let himself slip beneath the surface to wash away the tears and listened to the thrum of his heart against the base of the tub, the pop of bubbles as they rose. He screamed as loud as he could beneath the water, his pain erupting in bubbles, then sat up again, wiped his eyes.

  His gaze settled on Rose’s disposable razor on the side of the bath.

  FORTY-ONE

  Rose resurfaced to heavy thuds, the ground shuddering beneath her. She opened her eyes and looked directly into the lights dangling from the roof of the barn, so bright that her eyes stung and watered. She tried to sit up. Her vision spun violently and she fell back to the ground.

  ‘I had to do it. . .’ he said. ‘I had to.’

  She tried to find his voice, but her senses refused to settle, overwhelmed by all the other elements: the rotten musk of the barn, the scratch of hay, thuds against the ground. The pain in her ankle was nothing compared to that in her head. It felt as though her skull had cracked down the middle.

  Thud. Thud. Thud. The ground continued to vibrate with the blows.

  ‘They knew too much. If I’d let them go, they would have talked. . . Everyone would know what I am.’

  Tears filled his eyes.

  ‘I hate who I am, Rose. I hate it.’

  ‘Jay. . .’ It was all she could say.

  ‘I didn’t mean to scare him,’ he said through the tears. ‘I never thought that he would. . . It was all my fault. I hate myself for it every day.’

  She opened her eyes and searched for him. Montgomery was hunched over, his shirt removed. Sweat had seeped through his undershirt and his shoulder blades moved beneath it with each thrust. He was digging. The spade glinted in the light as it rose, crunched back into the earth floor.

  ‘I told you. . .’ he said, turning to look at her over his shoulder. ‘I told you not to pursue this, but you wouldn’t listen. Why didn’t you listen? Everything I did to stop you, and you still kept going. I burnt your bag. I set a trap for a bloody rat and sent it your way. I broke into your house and destroyed your paintings, posted about you all over town, snatched the damn journal out of your hands and you still wouldn’t stop. I don’t want to kill you, I have to. Why couldn’t you just leave it alone?’

  The man in the alley, her bag and phone burnt to a crisp, the break-ins, the attacks, the rat, the posters strewn all over town. It had all been him.

  ‘Of all the people I could have bumped into that night, it had to be you. I’d finally got the journal back, after almost two years of trying to find it. I’d worked so hard, and you swooped in and took it from me. I’d formed a relationship with the landlord when Finn was still living in the apartment while pretending to enquire about the neighbours’ complaints, but it was so I could swipe a key for the new lock. It was me the landlord called about the legal aspect of disposing of Finn’s belongings, and he told me exactly where they were. All of that took years, and in seconds, you snatched it away.’

  Swipe a key, she thought. She remembered the day he had come to her home with Leech and Watts. The key to the side door off the kitchen would have been left in the lock, ready for the taking. She hadn’t used the door in years, just the French windows leading to the porch. That’s how he got into her house.

  ‘Your wife. . .’ she said, and realised the truth the moment she spoke the words. Montgomery had never had a wife.

  ‘I had to look like I had a normal life,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t let anyone know what I am.’ He released a bellowing scream, threw the spade against the wall. ‘I’m a monster!’

  She lay there helpless as he sobbed into his hands, watched his back racked with the sobs. It was over now. Whatever he had in store, she wouldn’t win. He wiped his eyes and turned towards her. They were red raw. His face was streaked with mud, glistening with sweat and tears.

  He limped towards her, reminding her of the night the hooded man had tried to snatch her bag and how he had limped away. It hadn’t been from injuries she had caused; the limp had been there all along. He took her ankles and dragged her. She screamed with the pain and snatched at the ground, but it crumbled under her fingers.

  ‘I keep some of them here. . .’ he said. Sweat dripped from his brow and onto her T-shirt. ‘I wanted to keep them safe, before I had to cover my tracks.’

  She didn’t understand. He was talking in a crazed reel of words that only he could decipher. All she could think about was the pain.

  ‘I hid them at first, but I couldn’t keep them all here. The number kept growing, so I had to stage the rest. I couldn’t have their disappearances lead back to me, look similar to the last.’

  He stepped down into a pit, dragged her with him. The hard landing silenced her mid-scream, falling against wood and rubble. Dirt walls towered either side of her. He climbed out of the pit and looked down at her; a drop of sweat fell from his chin.

  ‘He. . . Johnny, he was the first I. . .’ He picked up a large piece of wood. ‘Look after him.’

  She clawed at either side of her, felt hard wooden panels.

  ‘Finn. . . Tell me what you did with Finn.’

  ‘He’s here.’

  She stared at him, at the madness in his eyes, the incoherent spiel falling from his lips.

  ‘I’m sorry. . .’

  He stepped down and placed the wood over her, smothering her in darkness. She gasped for breath as she finally understood, the realisation firing inside her brain like a gunshot.

  He was burying her alive.

  She screamed to the sound of nails banging into the wood, to the dirt hitting the lid of the coffin, and sobbed in the dark as the sound got further and further away. She felt the rubble beneath her, her sight useless in the dark. She latched on to something and inspected it with her fingers and the grasp of her palm.

  Bones.

  Look after him.

  She was lying on Johnny’s bones.

  She screamed until her ears rang, the sound bouncing off the wooden walls of the coffin. She couldn’t hear the crunch of the spade any more.

  She would die beneath the earth, and no one would ever know.

  Just like Finn.

  FINN

  19th April 2018

  Finn stood before the door, knowing his tormentor was waiting for him on the other side.

  He thought he would be terrified, but his heart was calm, his skin was bone dry.

  Before all this began, he would never have understood why someone would put their life in another man’s hands for him to do what he wished with it, but now all that separated him from death was a wooden door, and he was almost grateful. This was finally going to end.

  He reached for the latch. Cold air seeped into the hall. The street lights were out, and the road was completely silent but for the occasional swish of leaves as the breeze picked up and fell again. His tormentor stood in the shadows, a sympathetic smile crawling across his cheeks.

  ‘This way,’ he whispered softly.

  Finn nodded and followed him
down the steps towards a parked car. His head was light and his legs felt disconnected from his hips, moving without thought, driven by instinct. The man opened the door for him and leaned over to buckle him into the seat. His breath smelt of cigarette smoke and mint, his clothes of fresh sweat. Finn could feel the heat of his body, the shake of his fingers as he fumbled with the buckle. The night air drifted around him; it had a metallic smell to it, as if the wind was carrying the scent of rain that had yet to reach them. When they caught each other’s eyes, the man blushed and went to leave the car.

  ‘Will you tell me your real name?’ he heard himself ask. He sounded broken, distant.

  ‘Montgomery,’ he said through a smile, and shut the door behind him.

  Finn glanced out the window and up to his flat. He would never see it again. There were so many things he would never do or see: smell the sea or feel the chill of snow, close his eyes against the sun and see blazing orange behind his eyelids. He would never rekindle the relationship with his parents, who had failed to accept him for who he was, something that, in the back of his mind, he’d always hoped would happen, the sort of hope he knew would never materialise but imagined all the same. He would never fall in love. He was thirty years old and had never been loved. The realisation was sadder than the fate that awaited him and the injustice he had been served. He would never look into another man’s eyes and know that he was that person’s entire world. He was going to die without ever truly living. Tears scratched at his eyes. He blinked them away.

  Montgomery settled behind the wheel and started the engine, Finn’s fate sealed with the click of the locks.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked. ‘Ready to go?’

  Finn stared out the window at his flat. He thought the move was going to be the start of a new beginning; now all he wanted was for the misery to end.

  ‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘I’m ready.’

  They drove for miles in silence. The town thinned until they were surrounded by nothing but dark, open fields, with the occasional vehicle passing them on the other side of the road, headlights filling their car before they were thrown into darkness again. But Finn barely noticed – he stared out of the windscreen but didn’t really see. He could only think of the past, the life he had lived and the events he had overcome. For all those years, he told himself that the pain would be worth it in the end, that one day he would have a life that made the past seem as though it had belonged to someone else.

  ‘I did this all for you,’ Montgomery said suddenly.

  Finn jolted back into the present. Montgomery was wringing the steering wheel; he looked anxiously into the rear-view mirror before returning his eyes to the road.

  It was as if he had been asleep this whole time and now he was finally awake. Nervous energy surged through him, pulsed inside his skull until a splitting headache formed behind his eyes. In an instant, he realised he wasn’t ready to die.

  ‘I needed to make you see. . .’

  He looked around the inside of the car for a weapon, a way out. His eyes fell on the door handle, and glanced up at the scenery passing the glass in a blur. He could unbuckle his seat belt, open the door, and jump. But all Montgomery had to do was slam on the brakes, turn around and speed after him. He couldn’t outrun a car.

  ‘When we first met,’ Montgomery said, ‘I couldn’t get you out of my head, I. . .’

  Finn looked for a cigarette lighter in the dashboard to press it against Montgomery’s face, blind him in both eyes with scorching halos, but he couldn’t spot one in the dark.

  Montgomery shifted the car down into second gear. Finn flinched as his hand neared his thigh. The car slowed.

  ‘You were driving me mad. I just needed to see you. Be with you. Jay, I. . .’

  Finn wasn’t even sure Montgomery realised he had called him by the wrong name. The car turned off the lane and onto a gravel drive, rolling to a stop outside a pebble-dashed cottage. His whole body was shaking now, and however hard he tried, he couldn’t fill his lungs. He took quick, small breaths through his nose.

  Montgomery switched off the engine and turned in his seat.

  ‘What I did to your apartment. . . I had to make my colleagues think that you were mad.’

  Colleagues.

  Finn immediately felt sick. His mind spun.

  ‘You’re. . . with the police.’

  Montgomery nodded.

  Suddenly it hit him: he would never get help. The police would always be on Montgomery’s side. Finn already looked mad. If he escaped, got out of this alive, and went to the police station and told them it was one of their colleagues who had been harassing him, they would have him sent away to a facility for the deranged. That day in the police station, when he met the wrong Michael King – the text had come through the moment he left the room. Montgomery must have been so close, watching it all unfold.

  I will never escape you, he thought, as he eyed his face in the dark, the way the shadows collected on the right of his face as the moon shone through the windscreen. He had seemed so normal in the café that day. He wondered how he did it: hid the madness from sight until he was ready for it to be seen.

  ‘I love you,’ Montgomery said.

  Finn watched his eyes. Montgomery truly believed he loved him, a man he barely knew. How could he not see the terror in his eyes? The repulsion?

  A thought came to him suddenly. It was his only way out.

  ‘Prove it to me,’ Finn said.

  Montgomery laughed nervously.

  ‘Prove it to you?’

  ‘Kiss me,’ Finn said. He smiled as he fought back bile. It would only be for a second.

  Montgomery eyed him cautiously, before smiling back and edging closer, bringing the scent of sweat and smoke with him. His breath was sharp with nerves.

  Every part of Finn recoiled: his heart raced, his limbs shook, sweat ran down his body.

  Montgomery moved closer, until their noses were almost touching, and pressed his lips against his. Finn watched and waited for his eyes to close. As Montgomery’s tongue broke between his lips, Finn snatched the man’s groin and twisted.

  Montgomery shot back in his seat. He yelled behind clenched teeth as bubbles of saliva broke on his lips. Finn let go and quickly rammed his elbow into Montgomery’s face. He heard the cartilage in his nose break with the blow.

  Montgomery yelled and caught hot blood in his palms as Finn fumbled to unclip his belt. He opened the door wide, squirming out of Montgomery’s grasp as he slapped a bloody hand on his arm.

  Bolting out of the car, Finn stumbled, grazing his arms, slamming his face against the grass. Shock had turned the muscles in his legs to useless wet strips. He scrambled to his feet and staggered across the field eyeing the thick shadows of woodland in the distance. Once he got to the woods, he would lose him. He would run all night until he was safe. He knew Montgomery’s name and where he lived. They had to believe him now.

  The engine revved to life behind his back. He looked over his shoulder to see the car spit gravel as it headed in his direction. He turned back and kept running, the trees getting so close he could smell their sap in the air, hear the wild rush of their leaves moving in the wind. He didn’t move left or right, but ran in a straight line so as not to cut his speed. The engine got louder behind him, edging so close he could feel the heat of the headlights on his legs and back. He would reach the woodland and lose him. A car couldn’t fit between the trees.

  His legs flew out from under him and his back slammed against the bonnet. The windscreen cracked beneath him. He landed on the ground with a final blow, breathing in the dirt.

  He instantly smelt his own blood. His whole body felt broken. The car had stopped, its brake lights turning everything red: his skin, his clouds of breath, the grass beneath him. As his eyes closed, he heard the opening and closing of the car door, the pad of footsteps, and Montgomery’s sobs by his side.

  Finn woke to the sound of a man crying. He felt weightless somehow, as though he was float
ing through the air. The chill cooled something wet on his skin as pain seared through him. He couldn’t feel his legs.

  He looked up and saw Montgomery carrying him through the night. A cold tear fell onto Finn’s face.

  As his head lolled to the side he caught sight of a derelict barn, his vision jolting with Montgomery’s steps.

  ‘It’s always the same,’ Montgomery whispered above him.

  He kicked open the barn door and carried him into the darkness.

  ‘I can’t feel my legs,’ Finn whispered. His own voice sounded distant and strange, as if the blow had made him drunk.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Montgomery said, flicking on the light with his elbow.

  Strip lights flickered to life. Birds flapped in their nests perched high up on the beams. Finn watched a feather drift down from the rafters.

  ‘Why can’t I feel my legs?’

  ‘You were going to get away. I didn’t mean to. I never planned. . .’

  Montgomery settled him on a pile of hay. Finn looked down at his legs. His scream ripped through the air and sent the birds fleeing from their nests and through a hole in the roof.

  His legs were mangled, twisted this way and that; a bone had broken through the fabric of his jeans.

  ‘WHY?’

  He was really going to die. He clawed at the mud and hay, desperate to escape, but pain shot up his arms, and his legs were deadweight, pinning him down.

  Montgomery came towards him.

  ‘Don’t touch me!’ Finn bellowed. ‘Don’t fucking touch me!’

  But Montgomery knelt and cupped Finn’s face in his hands. Tears slithered down his cheeks as he frantically scanned for a speck of love or forgiveness. Finn spat in his eye.

  ‘I’d rather die than let you touch me!’

  Finn watched his saliva slither down Montgomery’s face, watched as fury seeped into his eyes like ink and his grip hardened. He pushed Finn onto his back and rose.

  Finn sobbed into the hay, his screams echoing above the rafters, as Montgomery paced the barn with his head in his hands, muttering frantically beneath his breath. He burst suddenly with a roaring scream and pushed the contents of the workbench to the floor. Tools flew through the air, disappearing into the hay. He stormed out of the barn and locked the door behind him.