by Rob Parker
They faced each other in the darkness, unsure of exactly where each party was, but sure of their invaders’ intentions.
The front door suddenly opened, and all paused. The blue night framed the square, but it was suddenly filled with a leaping shadow, which bounded into the hall with a vicious snarl, and immediately went for their assailants. Peter gasped with pure relief at the sudden lifeline, that this surely was the greatest gift from God. It was a dog—big, angry and fighting for its life—for all their lives. When the ponytailed figure appeared in the doorway, he knew for sure—it was Dewey.
Good fucking dog.
‘Get ‘em Dewey, get em,’ Grace was shouting, and Peter—life on the line, human survival in the balance—threw himself down the stairs. He dived into the two men, themselves fighting the giant dog, as it clawed and lashed and bit in an astonishing act of offensive force. The dopey lumbering hound was no more—although Peter had seen the suggestion of this before when, the other night, Dewey had smelled something he hadn’t liked.
The smell. As Peter landed on them, the sudden closeness with the men sent his nose into uproar, as he started thrashing and kicking and hitting as hard as he could. Dewey had torn the big one’s jumper, revealing jags of pale white flesh in the torch light. Christian was suddenly in the melee too, and Pam started throwing kicks from the bottom step. After a few more frantic seconds, the outsiders retreated to the door, Dewey snapping at them.
Peter noted that during the exchange, the intruders couldn’t have cared less about the attentions of the humans. It was the dog they were bothered by, twisting this way and that to avoid it. Dewey chased them out of the front door, passed Grace, who stepped aside to let them flee. Outside, without the confines of a ceiling, the big one looked especially huge—as Dewey chased the two off into the night.
44
Joyce hadn’t been bothered remotely by the power cut, and if anything, enjoyed the quiet it gave. She knew the twins would probably be losing their minds over it, with no XBox to play, no electronics to gaze upon. So she sat in the living room, waiting for the power to come back on, enjoying the darkness. Nobody could see her. She was invisible. Just like she always felt.
A creak on the dark stairs behind gave her gooseflesh, and she turned in her chair to look back into the hallway. ‘Boys?’
‘Power’s gone,’ came a voice.
‘My God, boys, please don’t creep around like that.’
‘But the power’s gone.’
She couldn’t see her sons, Boyd nor Burnett. Couldn’t even tell which one she was talking to. ‘I know.’
‘What do we do?’
They’d got bored even quicker than Joyce had thought. ’What do you want me to say boys?’
‘Nothing works.’
‘That’s the general result of a power cut.’
‘How long will it be gone for?’
Joyce sighed. This was genuinely like talking at a brick wall, but again, the experience was proving an ample metaphor for the way she felt about her existence in general. Just pleading into the void. ‘How do you think I would know?’
‘Your phone?’
‘And the wifi? Connected to a router? The router that needs the mains? Catching on yet?’
No answer.
‘There are some candles in the kitchen cupboard, the one by the fridge. Why don’t you get them? Use the lighter that’s in there with them, and go upstairs and read?’
No answer.
‘Boys?’
Joyce got up, and walked into the hall. Even in the darkness, she could see the stairway was empty. They had gone. She shook her head, and walked into the kitchen. No peace, even when the planets aligned to make sure you couldn’t even do anything.
She went to the cupboard, that store every house has, where the odds and ends of a functioning family were kept. The cast offs, the things you might need one day but not immediately, all of that existence detritus. She reached past the Sellotape, the batteries, the coils of ribbon and string, the unopened packet of screwdrivers, and grabbed the box of tea light candles, put there by herself for this exact occasion.
That’s when she heard snarling, shouting and screaming.
Her heart beat with sudden bedlam, clattering around in her chest, and she looked out of the kitchen windows. She couldn’t see anything, everything being so dark. But it sounded… yes, she thought. It’s coming from the front of the house.
She walked into the hall, using the gas lighter to ignite one of the tealights, and as the soft orange glow caught and flourished, she almost walked straight into a man.
Standing there, in the dark, in her hallway—looking like a living nightmare.
She didn’t have time to scream before the man grabbed her, clamped a hand over her mouth, and hit her so fiercely on the top of her head that she wasn’t even awake by the time she started to fall.
‘Back Dewey! Back! Here!’ commanded Grace, as she held the door open for him. Within a few seconds, the wolfhound lolloped around the corner of the hedges, panting heavily, and trotted in through the front door of the West’s house.
‘Who were they?’ asked Grace, as she closed the door behind her, and stood in the dark, all of them panting.
‘I’ve no idea,’ said Peter, as he emerged from the kitchen, bringing light with him from his phone. ‘Don’t go in there,’ he added gravely.
‘Why?’ she asked.
‘Is he dead?’ blurted Pam.
‘I think so,’ said Peter, a thousand-yard stare locked in tight.
Pam ran upstairs, shouting the name Jacob. Grace bent to calm Dewey, whispering what a good dog he was in his flopped ear. ’I think we now know who’s been causing us so many problems around here.’
‘If those things have my daughter…’ Christian jittered. ‘I have to follow them. I’ve got to find her.’
‘We need police, out here now,’ said Peter. ‘And an ambulance for all the good it will do.’
‘Who is in the kitchen? Did you say dead?’ Grace asked, trying to catch up. The logic part of her mind was desperate for answers, in a battle against the flight mode that was pressing for her attention. She turned to Christian, as though hearing his words for the first time too. ‘And they have your daughter?’
‘I don’t know,’ he replied desperately. ‘She disappeared from my car a couple of hours ago. I was by a watchtower right back in the estate, and… I heard the car door shut, and that was it. She was gone. We looked everywhere.’
‘We?’
‘I found the security guard, fat lot of good he was.’ They fell quiet for a moment, all minds churning, reeling. ‘He’s a little old guy with a gut, what good is he gonna do?’
After clipping Dewey’s lead back on, and since no one had answered her first question, Grace edged to the door frame of the kitchen. Peter put his arm out, and looked at her dead on. ‘Don’t,’ he said.
‘I’m a big girl, mate.’ She peered into the kitchen. In the dark, she could make out a form splayed on the kitchen island, which was enough. ‘The Fenchurches are dead too,’ she said, turning back round. ‘And it was… well, it was bad.’
Peter looked at the floor, his frown belying the puzzle he was trying to unravel. ‘They… castrated Fletcher. I think.’
Pam appeared on the stairs. ‘Jacob’s in his room, I’ve told him to stay there.’
‘What was that all about?’ Grace burst. ‘And this security guard has no back up? What’s he going to do, come over here and give those maniacs a talking to? We need to get some reception. And we need it now.’
‘What happened to the Fenchurches?’ It was Peter. He looked beaten.
Grace didn’t really know how to put it. She hadn’t even come close to processing what she had seen. ‘Similar to what happened here. It was gruesome.’
‘Was he… you know?’
Grace looked at him, unable to decipher his meaning. He slowly raised a hand, and with two fingers, mimed a snipping motion of scissors—which sent the penny
dropping. ‘He, umm… I don’t know. I don’t think so. The rest of him looked okay, it was all mainly … here…’ She motioned to her own face and head in a circular sweep of her palm.
‘What do we do now?’ asked Pam.
‘We need to go and find my daughter.’ Christian walked to the front door.
Peter looked up at Pam. ‘And we need to find ours.’ She choked back a sudden sob and nodded.
‘Right, then we need to tool up and get after them,’ said Grace. ‘They didn’t like Dewey, so he’s coming with us. And I’m thinking he’ll be able to point us in the right direction.’
‘I’m coming too—’ Pam said, but Peter held up his hands.
‘You need to stay and protect Jacob. I’ll get Alice back. We’ll get the children home.’
Christian opened the front door, the cold night waiting for them beyond.
‘Meet back here in five,’ Grace said, stepping through. ‘Grab anything you can use as a weapon. Let’s go and find them.’
45
Alice had been in shock since she’d come round in the dark place, drifting in and out of consciousness, as if her body was protecting her with a failsafe shutdown, keeping her from using all her energy up in one frantic go.
The smell in here was oppressive to the point of suffocation—musty, rotten and fetid—but it wasn’t her sense of smell that had prompted Alice out of her most recent exhausted slumber. Instead, she could hear something. An urgent back and to, a constant whisking. She opened her eyes, and tried to see. She’d been stuck here for long enough to lose some of the feeling in her legs, and had no idea what time it was. At best guess, it was evening time, but it was impossible to tell.
The darkness was almost complete, but a flickering light, almost candle-like, was glowing at the far end of the tunnel, allowing her sight of the concrete tunnel walls and the damp coursing down them in a slick sheen. But as her eyes adjusted, she could see that the reflection was broken by the shape of a man.
It wasn’t a tall man, although he was slightly crouched, hunched even. She could make out the paler outline of his hairless head and those godless eyes. And that sound—that shapshapshapshap which had woken her this time—was coming from him.
She lifted her head, righting the image, and it caused the man to step forward and the noise increased in volume—and thanks to her world being now the correct way up, she could see in full what was happening.
The man was staring at her, his eyebrows raised high and expectant. His sweatshirt was pulled up to reveal the palest of bare skin, while his hand was jostling forward and back inside his jogging bottoms. His breathing was urgent and building.
Fearful and confused, she pulled herself up, but because she was already backed up to the wall, she couldn’t put any more distance between her and that man. It was the little one, she could see now, when she could pull her eyes from his frantic hand. The youngest one she’d seen yet.
She expected him to come nearer, such was the fervour in his eyes. Gone was the anger, gone was the savagery. In its place was hope, and something akin to prayer. But he didn’t move, keeping an almost respectful distance from the bars.
Alice didn’t know how to feel. She was perplexed and revulsed, an obscure fascination holding her, preventing her from doing anything at all. She’d heard about this kind of thing, but never seen it. She was aware that this was what boys sometimes did, but only through the ruder channels of the playground grapevine. She’d never thought it would be in front of her, and it left her with an additional deep sense of shock.
Abruptly, another sound joined in. A shuffling, which grew in speed. Then a chattering voice, echoing along the tunnel to Alice and her young captor. The owner was agitated, there was more shuffling, and then, in the tunnel behind the small man, two bald heads bobbed towards them. It was the other two, carrying lanterns made of burning firewood outstretched. She thought of them as brothers, because that’s exactly what they looked like.
Disturbed, the young one looked behind and saw them approach, then turned back to Alice, his eyes wider, his hand now moving quicker than ever. Alice didn’t know what she was watching, what was happening.
The two other brothers shouted something in that deep, abbreviated chit-chat, like a pair of baritone crows, and as they reached their little brother, the light from their lanterns illuminated him fully for the first time.
His head was now thrust back, his eyes jammed tight and his jaw locked in a meshed grimace of filthy teeth.
His hand was pumping, and something flicked out of it. It was thick like mucus, and it gobbed on the floor at his feet. Alice was lost for both words and thoughts.
The tallest brother started berating the little one as he was still convulsing, while the middle one put his hand out to catch some of the liquid as it fell, like it was possessed of deep value. The tall one slapped the little one, as the fever seemed to ease, and barked into his face. He then pulled his little brother’s now-stilled hand up from his midriff, which, Alice could see in the lantern-light, was slick with a pale oil—and licked it off angrily.
The other one, the middle brother, fell to his knees and tried to scoop some of the fluid from the dirty floor, slurping the spoils from his fingers—in between angry reprimands directed at the sibling that had put it there.
Alice shut her eyes as tight as she could, her young mind having finally reached capacity, but her stomach lurched regardless and the tunnel echoed with her own violent retching as she was thoroughly sick all down her front.
46
As Christian ran back to his house, a curious sense of cold autopilot descended upon him, and the more it tightened its hold, the more he wished David were here. His unpreparedness and inadequacy were feelings he had been loath to admit to, but both had been growing spectres in the dark corners of his mind since fatherhood had arrived.
He and David had waited and waited, fighting relentlessly to become parents. They both knew that, and they both knew the joy of the moment had been earned. But in that patient battle, Christian wondered if it had prevented them from truly becoming ready for the actual experience itself. Most couples watched the mother’s stomach grow, and attended regular scans and appointments, were granted ultrasound images of what was happening within the expanding belly—and with that, Christian was sure, came an understanding of the additional life that would soon be entering their worlds, a comprehension. The baby was there, after all, in their midst, albeit safely in the womb.
All Christian and David had been able to do during this time, was attend classes and get funny looks from the apparent myriad of bigoted loons that also attended, leaf through paperwork, and eventually contemplate getting a nursery ready. That was it.
Then suddenly, they walked into a hospital with a brand new, empty car seat, and walked out shortly afterwards with a baby in it.
A living, breathing infant.
They were largely silent on the drive home, shock setting in. They’d actually done it. They were parents now.
The first week was frantic and happy, but shock was the underlying bass note.
They’d come to terms with it, quickly enough. They’d fallen in love with the child herself, and the label of daughter took unbreakable root. Indecision had held them from naming their little girl for the first week, but it was also through the thought that something might present itself more naturally. And it did.
The fighting was over. The scrabble to exercise their right to become parents was done, and with that the men, with their brand-new beloved daughter, had found peace.
Peace.
Olive branch.
Olivia.
And it stuck.
And now Christian, in his rank stupidity, had lost her.
As soon as he unlocked the door to his house, he’d sat on the bottom step of the stairs and cried. Sobbing snottily into the crook of his arm, lamenting his unpreparedness and cursing himself.
He had to get her back. He just had to.
And then the
re was his husband, David, at work on the late one, blissfully ignorant of the whole thing. Christian couldn’t even call him if he tried. Literally no way to get through to him at all.
He’d been wrestling with it since the awful moment he’d found the car seat empty. Drive back to the house and use the wifi to call for help. But that meant leaving her in those woods with whatever, whoever…
He stopped the thought dead. Seeing those things, and what they did to Fletcher Adams, turned his stomach to rot and ruin in a hot heartbeat.
Marching into the kitchen, he emptied out drawers and cupboards, looking for that one particular item he knew he had somewhere, stashed for emergencies. While he was turfing pans out onto the plush tile, and their loud clatter seemed to bounce off every surface in the damn house, he cursed further his continued lack of readiness. Why couldn’t he ever find anything? Why could you never find anything when you really needed it? He felt more useless than ever, and gave up, going for the thing he wanted next.
The biggest knife he could find.
He knew exactly where the knife block was, on the counter to the left of the sink, and as he reached for the handle of the carving knife that he knew was top left in the block, he remembered.
Yes! Of course!
He had got something right. There it was at last, the big Maglite, the one he’d loved ever since he was an X-Files devotee in his teens. It had been stood behind the knife block, in the corner where the counter met the fridge. He reached for it and actually felt something like a smile creep across his face as his fingers closed around its sturdy metal grip.
And then the sound of glass breaking, somewhere above him.
Upstairs. Something was upstairs.
The crashing sound of a large piece of glass shattering was heard all around the inky cul-de-sac, followed by the wandering tinkle of settling shards. Pam even heard it on the stairway, and crept down. Something about a loud noise, unexpected in the dark… it was designed through force of evolution to upset you.
