It Knows Where You Live (19 page)

“
Trog Boy Ran
.”

Niles slammed the receiver into its cradle and stepped back from the phone. In that moment, it looked like an alien thing, an artefact from another world, and he was terrified of it. Utterly terrified. In fact, everything around him was now unfamiliar—his furniture, the pictures on the walls, the carpet beneath his feet. It was all scary and uncertain, like the shifting terrain of a nightmare, and at any moment he expected the walls of his house to cave in around him.

None of it looked the same. Since Abby’s departure, everything had changed, and now those changes were worse than ever—they were reshaping his entire existence.

Unable to even think, he rushed from the house and headed for his car. He drove away from town, passing through estates and industrial areas, and joined the ring road. Perhaps if he was moving he could outrun this thing—whatever it was. He put his foot down and drove, staying on the ring road, planning to make a continuous circuit of the city. When he ran out of petrol, there were plenty of service stations to choose from, and as long as he kept his eyes away from the newsstands and didn’t look at the CCTV monitors, he felt he might be safe until he could get back on the road. He glanced at the dashboard: almost a full tank. That would do for a while, and he could worry about the logistics of refuelling later, once he’d calmed down.

Instinctively, Niles reached out to turn on the radio...but he pulled back his hand, afraid that if he turned it on he might hear that low, husky voice repeating those three hideous, nonsensical words. Or, worse still, singing them. The sky was overcast; clouds pressed down, hemming him in. But at least he was moving, and he was well away from the curse of those words—and that’s when it hit him: this was a curse. He was cursed.

Cursed
.

His mobile phone rang and he fished it out of his pocket. Without even looking at the screen, he wound down the window and threw it out. He didn’t look to see where it landed, and when his gaze took in the three-word registration of the car in front, he closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them it was still there, even closer in the windscreen. He passed placards and advertising hoardings flashing the same words at him. Even the road signs had changed to incorporate the damned phrase.

“No, no, no...” His own words were useless against it; he had no weapon, he was already defeated.
 

Niles drove for as long as he could, and when the day began to darken and night took shape around him, he realised he would soon run out of petrol. Everywhere he looked, everything he saw, he could not escape those words. Then, finally, the thing the words had been introducing, or summoning, finally chose its moment to move onstage. It had been a long time coming, but it had kept him waiting long enough.

Its appearance was almost a relief.
 

It began as a vague shape he glimpsed in the side mirror, keeping time with him on the hard shoulder: a small, hunched figure dressed in rags, moving briskly alongside, and slightly behind, the car. In a short amount of time, the figure became increasingly clear: it took on shape and form and substance. Before long, it was fully realised, and Niles was so afraid that he couldn’t bring himself to turn his head and look to the side to take it in. He smelled sweat, bourbon and cigarettes, the aroma of loneliness.

It was running, that figure; trying to catch up with him. Trying to
catch
him.

The short legs stretched out and the arms pumped steadily at its sides, its great speed belying the misshapen bulk of its small yet sturdy body. And was that a short, broad tail whipping around at its rear? The car was moving at 70 mph, but still the figure kept pace, and it looked as if it might be able to do so forever.

The urge to turn and look directly at it was by now almost overpowering, but Niles resisted. He kept his eyes from the running figure and its big, leering grin. If he looked—if he pinned a name on this thing—that would make it real, and he didn’t want it to be real. He did not want to confront it. If he ignored it, he could just about manage to pretend he was imagining everything.
 

Niles looked again at the dashboard. The fuel warning light was on, so he had about forty miles left in the tank. Forty miles; it wasn’t much. Not nearly enough. He kept his gaze straight ahead, looking not at the road but at the darkening stretch of sky above the light traffic. The flat and lowering sky seemed so much like the lid of a coffin gently falling down to lock him inside.

“
Abby
,” he whispered. “
Oh, Abby. I’m sorry
.
So sorry
.” But it wasn’t his fault; it wasn’t her fault; it was nobody’s fault. Nobody’s fault at all.

Weeping now, Niles gripped the wheel and hoped he could think of something before the petrol ran out. While alongside the car, gaining slightly with each graceful, muscular stride he took, Trog Boy ran.

I LIVE IN THE GUT

Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights.

J
ONAH
1:17

K
ING
J
AMES
B
IBLE

I live in the gut. Always have, always will. I’m not a cerebral person; not really. I sometimes pretend to be, if I think it’ll get me something I want, but it’s all just an act, a performance. What I really am—all I’ve ever been—is a caveman. I see something, I want it, and I take it. I’m violent and visceral. I’m a pair of fists waiting to hit someone. Usually I don’t have to wait too long.

•
   
•
   
•

This was a few years ago now; I’m not sure how long exactly. I was living in a beat-up little caravan sited on a patch of waste ground on the north-east coast, just biding my time until something interesting happened. I’d had some problems with a woman, her husband, and the man they’d sent to kill me. He was lying somewhere on the bottom of the North Sea with lead fishing weights tied to his feet. The husband and wife team was long gone. They knew enough to know when to quit.

The season was turning, summer becoming a cool autumn, and I wasn’t much looking forward to the cold winter months up ahead. The caravan roof was full of holes. The walls were like paper. I needed desperately to upgrade my living arrangements but I didn’t have the money to do so.

It was a Saturday morning, I think. Early. The air was crisp and cool, the sky was clear and seemed to stretch away into forever, and the sea was so still it looked like it had been painted on. I stepped out of the caravan onto the short, dry grass and did a few combinations just to loosen up my muscles: kicks and punches, trading blows with the day. After a few minutes, I started off on my run. I was planning on three miles, just to wake up my body. Last night I’d worked late at the club and had to eject a couple of troublemakers who thought being tough meant trading B-Movie dialogue and assuming a sloppy fighting stance.

I jogged slowly along the cliff top, breathing deeply, filling my lungs with that cold, stinging, salty air. It felt good to be alive, and back then I believed that was all I could reasonably ask of my existence. The roof of the world seemed impossibly high, and I stared up at it as I ran, trusting my feet to avoid any divots or outcroppings. I ran the three miles without even being aware of my body. The biology took care of itself and I was free to let my mind roam.

I spent the rest of the morning sitting outside the caravan, reading a book of Hemmingway stories. I might not be intelligent, but I still know a good tale when I see one. My mother raised me to be a reader. A love of books was the best thing she ever gave me. I drank coffee and fruit juice, ate a tuna and olive sandwich for lunch. Time passed; the sky shifted; the sun travelled across the heavens in its own slow, deliberate way.
 

Later that afternoon I locked up the caravan and headed into town. I had my training bag with me and thought I might go and lift a few weights or hit the heavy bag at Henry’s Gym. Traffic was light; the tourist season was over and most of the locals liked to walk or ride bicycles at this time of year. I parked my ancient Ford in an alleyway behind the gym and used the rear entrance, up a rusted steel fire-escape staircase and through the glass fire door that never seemed to be locked.

The gym was quiet when I walked in. Two overweight men were dancing around in the boxing ring, throwing tentative punches with little genuine intent behind them. A few guys were over in the weights corner, flexing their muscles in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror. Two women were working on the heavy bag: one of them—a willowy blonde with a bright red Alice band around her head—was holding the bag while the other—an athletic black woman with striking green eyes—put all she had into a series of kicks and punches that looked like they’d take your head off if they connected.

I nodded at Henry, who was sitting in his glass booth listening to a radio talk show. He smiled in that slow, sure way of his and raised his calloused right hand, the one with the missing thumb. I went into the changing room and slipped into some loose-fitting tracksuit bottoms and a Guinness T-shirt. Then I put my bag in the locker I rented there, and went back out into the main gym area.

The boxers were still moving around the scuffed canvas ring, their feet sounding like whisks on a drum. One of them raised a gloved hand as I passed by. I recognised the face but couldn’t put a name to it, so I just nodded and continued on my way towards the squat machine.

After my workout—legs and shoulders today—I went over to say a proper hello to Henry.

“How you doing?” His voice was low, grizzled from the throat cancer he’d beaten into submission several years ago.

“Not bad. Been better, been a hell of a lot worse.”

He laughed. “Sit down.”

I lowered myself into the wooden chair opposite him and leaned back, yawning.

“Am I keeping you up?”

“It’s been a tough few days. I’ve lost some sleep.”

Henry smiled, nodded. He knew enough about me not to ask for any details. We’d worked together in the past, on small jobs—putting the frighteners on debtors, warning off violent ex-husbands, collecting money from people who gambled but then didn’t like to pay—and he knew I was capable of looking after myself.

“You haven’t been around for a while. Back for good?”

I nodded. “Yeah, I need to get back in shape. I’m working three nights a week at The Maple Lounge, so I’ve got to get my reflexes back.”

“I can set you up with a good sparring partner. A kid out of Wales. He needs some serious ring time to prepare for a title fight.”

“What discipline?”

“Muay Thai.”

I nodded. “Set it up. He might kick my arse, but I could probably use the lesson in humility.” I stood and walked to the door, turned around. “Come over and see me tonight. I have a good bottle of scotch and a craving for some company.”

Henry nodded without looking up from his paperwork. “See you around nine.”

I walked out the door, went down to my car—I’d used that same back door to the gym, which had become a habit. By the time I got back to my caravan it was late afternoon. I sat outside and drank a glass of pale ale, watching the sun make its slovenly way down towards the horizon line: the terminator, the line between dark and light, good and evil.

I was feeling restless so I took a walk down to the beach. I liked it at this time of day. All the day-trippers were long gone, and the only person I might see would be a solitary dog walker, throwing a stick or a ball for their canine companion. I made my way down the cliff-side path, stones shifting under my feet, loose dirt rattling down the narrow single-track ahead of me.

I noticed the body before I even reached the sand. At that point I didn’t know for sure what it was, but I’ve seen enough dead bodies to recognise the signs. I saw my first one in Afghanistan. All the corpses I’ve seen since coming out of the army were not wearing uniforms.

I walked slowly across the dry sand until it became wet and hard, then I stopped, scanned the beach in all directions. It was quiet, empty. The only sound was the surf, lapping away at the shore. The body—and now I could be certain that it was a body—was lying about three or four metres away from the white-foam surf. Face down, one arm by its side and the other stretched upwards on the sand. I couldn’t help noticing she was naked.

I started walking again and when I reached the spot I crouched down to examine the body closer. The sea smell overpowered any kind of stench so I didn’t know how long the body had been there. It was a woman. She had long dark hair, knotted with seaweed and sand and tiny dead crabs. Upon closer inspection, I could see she didn’t have any hands or feet. They’d been severed. Then, when I looked again, I realised my mistake. They had not been cut off; they were intact, but they didn’t resemble normal hands and feet. They looked like flippers.

I checked the beach again. Nobody there. Glancing up at the cliff-top, I confirmed I wasn’t being watched. Then I turned her over onto her back. Her face was wide and pale and her eyes were huge, with big black pupils. She had cheekbones like razorblades, and they were high up, giving her an aristocratic look. Her lips were blue. They were slightly parted, showing a row of small white jagged teeth. Her breasts were huge, her waist was as thin as my calf, and her crotch was smooth and hairless. The slit down there looked like a gill; it matched the ones situated at both sides of her body, below the ribcage. There was a deep cut in her belly. The wound was clean, but I could see it had bled out a lot before she’d been washed ashore.

She was the closest thing I’d ever seen to true beauty.

I didn’t know what else to do, so I picked her up and carried her off the sand, up the cliff-side path, and back to my caravan. I lay her down in the bathtub in the cramped little bathroom pod. When I stepped back into the doorway, sweating and aching and wondering what the hell I was going to do next, one of those little gills on her side opened slightly, like a puckering pair of lips.