She looked back at the advancing figure. It was cloaked in shadow, as if the light from the lamp was insufficient to burn away the clinging darkness. It had brought that darkness with it from wherever it had come from.
She started looking for a weapon — anything with which she could defend herself. She grabbed a Bunsen burner, and then threw it to the floor. Her grasping hand caught hold of a rack of test tubes and she threw them at the hopping nightmare, but it just flung out its arm and batted them away. The sound of breaking glass was tiny, inconsequential. She was too deep inside the building for anyone to hear. It was pointless even screaming.
The door was miles away, on the other side of the room, with the light switch on the wall nearby. She’d been moving in the wrong direction. The scarecrow knew exactly what it was doing, herding her into a corner like a trapped rat. When she felt the work bench pressing against the small of her back, she almost fell to the floor in defeat. This was it: there was nowhere left to run. She had come up against the wall at the other side of her life, and now it was all over.
She thought again of Katherine’s face, and she smiled. Then she thought about how she’d never get the chance to tell Craig Royle how she felt about him. But that was probably a good thing. He wanted to get back with his wife. The last thing he needed was another complication, some lonely woman claiming that she was in love with him.
But she was, wasn’t she? She hadn’t been in love with Katherine — that had been a combination of lust and availability. Or was that all love really was, anyway?
She’d never know.
It was too late. It was all too late to matter…
The scarecrow’s wooden support scraped on the tiled floor, making a squeaking noise that broke up the horrible tap-tap-tapping.
Wanda was only aware that she was crying because she felt the moisture on her cheeks. She wiped it away with one hand, puzzled. She’d never been a particularly emotional woman, so it seemed odd that she should weep at the prospect of her own demise.
She reached behind her, trying to find something on the work bench that might help. A sharp blade sliced her fingers, and she closed them around the scalpel. She brought round her arm and brandished the tiny blade, almost driven to laughter because of how pathetic it looked in the face of the hopping figure.
The scarecrow halted a foot in front of her. It was immobile, as if it had never moved at all. The photograph rippled. But there was no breeze, no wind to cause the fluttering motion.
Wanda looked back at the blade, and then at her wrist. No, that would be too slow. And she didn’t have the will power to cut her own throat.
“Come and get me, then, fucker.” She waved the scalpel slowly in the air, tracing a pattern that she hoped would act as a magic charm. “Come on.” She was whispering now. Nobody could hear anyway, so why waste her breath on loud threats or screams? Better to saveit for the fight to come.
The scarecrow began to silently shake, as if it were rapidly shrugging its shoulders. It took a second for Wanda to realise that the damned thing was laughing at her.
Diary: Four
there monks down the stairs like in that filum i saw. they singin. hear them now wen I rite this. like prayering on a sunday school. i want my mummy and daddy. daisy like a flower not hear. she gon somewr els an I don now were. want sing to stop. scared. don wan go down the stairs. mite get me. mite kill me. clickey comin now. i hear him comin. clickety-clickety-click. mummy. mummy. daddy. i scared mummy. but mummy sing aswel. i can hear her sings louder than the rest of the sings. my i scared mummy.
mummy i scared of mummy.
of mummy and daddy.
PART FOUR
Growth
“Armed sieges, hostage situations… flavour of the fucking month.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ERIK SAT IN his car outside Abby’s place and watched the sun as it started to rise. Faint, blood-red smears stained the grey wash, transforming it into a thing of savage beauty. He raised his hands and scrubbed at his face, trying to clear his head.
On the back seat, Monty Bright was silent, wrapped up in his blankets like a new-born baby. And wasn’t that an apt description? He’d been born anew into this world, passing through from some other place — a place he’d been searching for his entire life and had finally found. But the place had rejected him; it had sent him back here, where he no longer belonged.
Erik had watched that smug little writer bastard leave Abby’s place while it was still dark. Maybe he should have done something then, but he’d been unable to move, as if his rage had immobilised him. In the past, he would have got out, smacked the guy, and then dragged him into the car and taken him somewhere to teach him a lesson. But now he felt different. He couldn’t act; his limbs were tired, his brain refused to work in the same way. So he’d stayed here and watched the house, waiting for things to become clear.
Like the sky above him, he was caught up in the process of transformation. The only problem was, he couldn’t be certain regarding what he had been or what he was about to become.
No, he would let someone else sort out the bastard who was fucking his Abby. He wouldn’t get his own hands dirty on a secondary character in the tragic story of his life, not this time. There were more important tasks to deal with. He took out his phone and dialled the number of a kid whose particular skill set he’d used before, and who’d been primed to expect a call. This kid ran a tight little crew who knew how to swing baseball bats and exactly what to do with them when they did. It would cost him a couple of hundred quid, but the job would get done properly. There would be no mistakes. The pathway to Abby would be clear.
He made the call, feeling nothing at all: no doubt, no shame, and no sense of wrongdoing. When he hung up the phone he felt lighter, as if he’d shed several layers of skin.
After a short pause, he put away his phone, reached down under the passenger seat, and took out the plastic Tesco carrier bag he’d stashed there. He placed the bag on the seat between his knees and carefully opened the package. He took out the gun. It was a small-calibre handgun, something he’d confiscated from a drug-dealing chav a couple of months ago. Instead of disposing of the weapon, he’d kept it. At the time, he hadn’t known why he’d done so. Now he realised that he’d been hurtling towards this moment for a long time.
This moment; this place:
The voice that spoke the word in his head belonged to Monty. Since he’d killed Hacky, the bond between them had strengthened, and they could communicate clearly like this: snatches of dialogue, words and phrases
