King Carrion (2 page)

CHAPTER ONE

The rain had already stopped when Mason reached the address scribbled on the scrap of creased paper in his hands. He stood outside the house and pulled the hood of his coat back from over his head. He absently ran one finger over his wedding ring as he walked down the cul-de-sac’s main road, which was lined either side with red brick homes and winter-bare gardens. Most of the driveways were empty this close to midday, but he was aware of the occasional twitching net curtain in upstairs windows.

     Crows and gulls wheeled and glided overhead, dark shapes against the grey sky.

     Mason looked at the front of the house and swallowed a sour knot in his throat. His heartbeat filled his ears, drowning out the sounds of the meandering day. He put the piece of paper in his pocket and wiped his mouth, his hand scraping over the bristly stubble on his chin. A gust of wind slipped down the road and pulled at his shoulders. He winced as he appraised the windows and the front door. Exhaled a tired breath that tasted of cigarettes and sour nerves on an empty stomach.

     He walked up the pathway that split the dark lawn of patchy grass. His legs felt rigid and brittle. He kept his head lowered because the thought of seeing Ellie’s face in one of the windows almost induced in him a panic attack.

     A bearded gnome with a conical red hat smiled gleefully at him from beside a bird table heaped with sunflower and pumpkin seeds. The fence that separated the garden from the next one had been recently creosoted, and he wondered if some male friend had done it for Ellie. He put the thought aside and stopped at the front door. Churning in his stomach. The flutter of his heart. He closed his eyes for a moment before he knocked slowly on the door three times and then stepped back until he was halfway down the path. He stood with his arms at his sides, glancing at the front door. Anxiety frothed in his stomach, rising into his chest. He suddenly felt very exposed.

     He was looking at his boots when the door opened, and for a second he didn’t want to raise his head. But he did, and he opened his mouth to talk but the words never left the back of his throat.

     Ellie stood in the doorway, frowning with something like disdain in her eyes. She folded her arms across her chest and stiffened. Her mouth was flat and bloodless.

     Silence except for the breeze whispering through the tall trees behind the houses.

     Mason’s heart winced. He fidgeted with his hands. Looked at Ellie, blinking rapidly. His eyes watered. She had lost some weight since he’d last seen her. Her hair was cut shorter and dyed a little darker. She wore a dark green woollen jumper and blue jeans. Dull white trainers. Size six, he remembered.

     “What are you doing here, Mason?”

     He wanted to move, to step towards her. Be closer to her. But it felt like he was submerged in cold water up to his knees.

     “I just wanted to see you.” The moisture seemed to have been leeched from his mouth.

     “We’re not together anymore,” she said.

     “It’s not official yet.”

     “How did you find me?” She didn’t move from the doorway.

     He cleared his throat. “We still have mutual friends.”

     “I wish that weren’t the case.”

     “I’m sorry.”

     “What are you sorry for?”

     “Everything.”

     “Everything?”

     “Yeah.”

     “You shouldn’t be here, Mason.”

     “I had to see you.”

     A shadow passed over her face. “Well, now you have. Please leave.”

     Mason bit his lip to hide the trembling of his mouth. “I’ve come a long way to see you. I had to hitchhike here from Devon, for fuck’s sake.”

     “Don’t swear at me,” she said. “Don’t tell me how you’ve had a hard time. I don’t want to know.”

     He sighed and had to glance away from her.

     Ellie coughed into one hand. “I came here to start again, and to try and forget what happened. And most of all to forget you, Mason.”

     “Ellie, listen…”

     She shook her head. “Please leave.”

     “But…”

     “Leave or I’ll call the police. You shouldn’t be here. You’re not supposed to be here.”

     Mason sagged and looked at the ground. His throat tightened as he raised his face at her. He blinked at the cold breeze and shivered. The sky seemed darker than before. Far away thunder echoed from the west.

     “I haven’t got anyone else,” he said, hating how pathetic his voice sounded. “I’ve got nowhere to go.”

     She shook her head again. “That’s not my problem. You’ve burned all your bridges, Mason. You did a terrible thing.”

     “I made a mistake.”

     “And now you’re paying for it.”

     “Please, Ellie. I’ve stopped drinking. Haven’t touched any booze in months. I’m sober.” And with that he felt a pressure behind his eyes and a sudden craving for anything from the finest scotch to a bottle of the cheapest cider from a corner shop. His teeth itched and he clenched his hands into fists; Ellie noticed and stepped back behind the threshold.

     “Please go away, Mason,” she said. “And don’t come back. Never come back.”

     “Okay,” he said. “Okay.” Eyes downturned, he slowly turned away and went back down the pathway and onto the pavement outside the garden. When he looked back, Ellie was already closing the front door. He was sure he heard the click of a lock and the scrape of a bolt being thrown.

     He stood in the street with the silent houses around him and looked up to the sky. Rain began to patter upon his shoulders and the ground. The concussion of thunder above the city reminded him he was far from comfort and shelter.

CHAPTER TWO

Mason walked the streets as the day wore on, even as the rain worsened and the high-up echoes of thunder boomed past the blanket of ashen clouds. He weaved through crowds of shoppers and pensioners. Young mothers pushed prams within which infants squirmed or slept. A bearded man rebuked his son for stepping into the road.

     The smell of takeaway food and cooking meat mixed with damp clothes. Cigarette smoke and diesel fumes. Tall old buildings loomed over narrow streets where different languages were overheard and dismissed. Stray words caught in his ears. Gossip whispered past creased mouths. The squawking of old women gathered under the changing lights of a pedestrian crossing.

     Car headlights reflected upon the wet roads. The blare of a horn. A thumping stereo muffled by tinted windows. The squeal of tyres. The sound of a barking dog from beyond an open window.

     He was shivering in his clothes, treading along slippery pavements, past frothing gutters and drains. His head spun and his vision watered at the edges, distorting the faces of the people he passed. He sheltered in a doorway, and then under a bus stop where he received odd looks from other people when he began muttering to himself and rubbing his eyes with his knuckles. The image of Ellie’s face taut with an expression of mixed distaste and pity replayed in his mind and left him feeling hopeless as he wandered down unknown roads. He passed windows aglow with light from lamps and flickering television screens. The warm interiors of pubs and restaurants lured him to their doorways, but he paused at the thresholds and slumped at the sour musk of his own scent underneath his dripping coat. He watched the people eating and drinking, smiling and laughing.

     It all seemed so far away.

     He meandered to a nearby park and stood on the grass, blinking in the rain and the cold. Hunger pawed at the walls of his stomach, so he sipped from the water bottle out of his rucksack and hoped that would be enough for a little while. He checked how much was left in the bottle then put it away, and rubbed his hands together to warm his palms, glancing around as the park slowly emptied. A few people loitered on the pathways, taking photos with their phones. There was some laughter. When he saw a young couple walking hand-in-hand he had to look away and exhale slowly to quieten the anger in his gut. Then he found himself alone in the rain, with the wind sweeping across the grass.

     He sighed. Bit his lip. He was stupid to come here, to the town. Had he expected Ellie to welcome him with open arms and forgiveness? To still feel something for him? Desperation had made him foolish. Maybe he was losing his wits and going a little mad. That would not surprise him. He sometimes thought about those things when the night was darkest.

     Dusk was falling around him, past the skeletal trees and sloping roofs of old buildings. The spire of a nearby church darkened against the fading sky, like a tower of onyx raised from the earth.

*

As darkness fell he ducked inside a shop doorway and checked his pockets. Aside from a few sticks of chewing gum, a pouch of rolling tobacco and a pack of Rizlas, there was only some spare change and a rumpled five pound note. Certainly not enough for a room in a hotel or a B&B. Maybe enough for a few cups of tea and a chocolate bar.

     The surge of office staff finishing work had receded, and the streets quietened as the temperature dropped. For a while he loitered under an empty bus shelter, sitting in a corner with his hands in his pockets and head bowed against the icy wind. Hours passed in tedium and cold, humming the tune of an old song under his breath. The rain had slowed to a soft drizzle seen in the sodium glare of the streetlights. Cars splashed through the puddles and standing water on the roads. Pubs and restaurants were filling with life; laughter, loud voices, and the clink of wine glasses. Mason yearned for that world and yet detested it, even as he tried to stifle the urge for a cold pint of Stella.

     He thought about Ellie and wondered if she had company; someone she’d met at her place of work or in a bar. Maybe they were in one of the restaurants or pubs, enjoying a meal or a drink. Maybe she was in bed with someone; the image of her gasping and delighted beneath the movement of a faceless man made him senseless with anger. He shook his head, spat phlegm onto the pavement, and dug his fingernails into his palms so hard they left dark indentations in the skin. It did no good to think like that; it would drive him back to the comforting haze of supermarket brand vodka, if he wasn’t careful.

     Mason left the bus shelter and traipsed down the street, weaving around a group of laughing teenagers outside a set of large iron gates. He kept his head down and avoided eye contact. After he’d passed the group, a few of the boys spat insults at him, but he didn’t turn around. He just kept walking.

CHAPTER THREE

Mason found a twenty-four hour café and sat at a table near the large window in the shopfront, watching the street while he nursed a cup of tea. He picked the crumbs of a digestive biscuit from the saucer and dropped them into his mouth. When the waitress wasn’t looking he slipped sachets of sugar into his pockets. On the other side of the room, an overweight man bulging inside a dark fleece was hunched over an all-day breakfast, stuffing scraps of sausage, hash browns and bacon hurriedly into his mouth like he was scared someone would steal it from beneath him. Mason tried not to stare as his mouth watered for hot food.

     The smell of his damp clothes and drying sweat had left the two tables closest to him empty. When the staff began glaring at him, he finished the tea he’d already spent over an hour looking down on, picked up his rucksack and left.

*

After roaming the streets in the hours during both sides of midnight, avoiding drunks and belligerent young men looking for confrontation, he could take no more and sought refuge in a tumbledown churchyard. He took the penlight torch from his coat pocket and stepped amongst the old graves, running the thin beam over the names of the long-dead and forgotten. Derelict and scarred gravestones. Most of the burial plots seemed to have been left untended amongst the overgrown grass.

     He walked along the outside of the church, treading through clumps of thick weeds, and found a side doorway recessed within an arched stone porch. The door was locked when he tried the black metal handle, so he unshouldered his rucksack and sat upon the cold stone floor with his back against the wall. On the opposite wall was a corkboard pinned with church announcements and events. He pulled the blanket from his rucksack and covered his legs and drew his knees to his chest and watched the incessant fall of the rain beyond the doorway.

     He wished he was with Ellie, in a warm bed in a warm room under a safe roof. His joints scraped whenever he shifted his limbs. The hard wall found the tender spots of his aching back. Needling pain behind his thighs and knees. And before he fell asleep, all of the guilt, shame and painful memories of the last few years replayed in flashbulb images behind his eyes.

*

In dreams he saw the wreck of the car by the side of the road and the people screaming inside. Then he saw the tyre marks on the tarmac and the gouges in the earth where the car had veered from the road. Flashing blue lights all about him in the waning light of a summer’s day. Electric blue. Someone was calling his name with a voice stripped down to panic and horror. The indistinct forms of sheep bleated from the field beyond the road. Smell of smoke and burning rubber. Torn metal and shredded plastic.

     The last thing he saw was the small girl in the backseat, slumped across the seat with a neck that seemed too loose and boneless. There was blood in her hair. Her eyes were open and staring at Mason without sight.

     She was the Dead Girl.