The Deviants (11 page)

Max was the first to turn around and walk back up the steps… I'd forgotten about his problem with blood. Corey was just staring at it all in wonder, like he'd walked into Wonka's factory. And me – little details kept screaming out at me.

The full bath of blood, slowly rocking in the room at the back.

‘Don't worry, it's only pig's blood,' said Fallon brightly. ‘We make black pudding out of it and sell it. Mum invented that structure it's on to keep it moving, else it clots.'

Corey nodded. ‘I can see why your mum doesn't want anyone down here.'

‘Yeah. A lot of this stuff is just waiting to go out to the
furnace. The ham's curing. And the pelts we sell to humane fur traders. Mum knows this guy down the market.'

‘I'm just going to see if Max is OK,' I announced, leaving Corey investigating a barrel of dead rats on ice.

I went back up to the lean-to and into the lounge. Max was sitting on the sofa, clutching a bottle of Acid Rain and looking as white as the three-legged cat with the tiara, currently licking her own ass beside a stack of old
Hello!
magazines near the fireplace.

‘You OK?' I said, sitting down beside him.

‘Don't know what I expected.' He sniffed. ‘I fainted when we watched
Twilight
.'

‘Oh, yeah. I forgot.' I smiled.

‘I think… No, forget it.'

‘What? No, what were you going to say?'

He took a deep breath. ‘I think about it sometimes. What Jess looked like. That night on the seafront.'

‘Oh God, do you?'

He nodded. ‘Can't help it. I remember the judge at the inquest, saying about all the blood on the front of the bus. And I can see it in my head, even though I wasn't there.'

‘You shouldn't think about it. It doesn't help you.'

‘Sometimes in the night, I'll be dreaming about something else and then I'll see the bus coming and I'll see it hitting her and… there's blood all over the place.' He looked at me. ‘I saw them washing down the road the next day, Ells. She couldn't have meant that to happen, could she?'

‘No, of course not. Don't think about it,' I said, lying back on the sofa, cuddling his head against mine. ‘It was an accident.'

He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘She's never really gone, not to me. I haven't felt her leave. Do you know
what I mean? I still feel like she's here sometimes. Is that weird?'

‘No, it's not weird at all.' It was the drink talking now. Definitely the drink.

‘But at night, all I can think about is the blood and the screeching of the brakes and the dent in that bus. It's a nightmare, Ells. It haunts me.'

It sounds sick, but that's what gave me the idea. The idea for the revenge on the Shaws. And as I sat there, holding Max against me, my brain went into overdrive, and a messy little snowball began to roll.

‘So what did you do?'

10

A Horrid Shock

T
he lean-to door rattled first at 10.36 p.m. The sky was dark outside the farmhouse windows. A thrill ran right through me like a hot snake.

‘OK, this is them now. Go go go!' I whispered, as each of us scattered to our positions. Fallon went to answer the door, but before she could get there, it rattled again. I watched from my spot behind the birdcage, coiling the string around my hand. The door creaked open.

‘Oh. Hi,' said Fallon. I peeked around the side of the cage and caught my second glimpse of the four Shaw kids, standing in the glow of the security light. Straddling their bikes, they stood in the lane outside the farmhouse, threatening, like a dog-pack.

‘All right, Fallon?' said the oldest, a chubby boy with zits marching down the length of both his cheeks and white flip-flops on. He had piggy blue eyes, and a blond buzz cut that could have grated cheese. I knew his name was Luke. ‘Sorry we're late. We went over to the Harvest Home. How come you weren't there?'

‘I didn't want to go,' said Fallon meekly, scuffing her
boot on the floor behind her. Her right hand was trembling behind her back.

‘She was afraid to see us,' laughed the little blonde girl on the smallest bike. This was Luke's sister, Radclyffe; the most evil of the lot, apparently. Lighter of matches, thrower of bricks. She couldn't have been more than seven. Her two front teeth were missing, and she wore a white strappy sun dress and patent black Doc Martens. Her face looked sharp enough to slice Fallon in two. I could see why she was scared of them, though they didn't scare me.

‘Let's have it, then.' The other boy, Alfie, lanky and black-haired, with a Mohican haircut, yawned.

His sister, Clem, who had a red bob, was on the bike just behind him, wearing a minty-green T-shirt bearing the slogan ‘Butter Wouldn't Melt', with some cartoon character winking beside it. She didn't say a word, but her scowl was focused squarely on Fallon.

‘I haven't got it,' said Fallon, a wobble in her voice. ‘The money.'

‘Oh dear,' said Luke, folding his arms. ‘Well, that won't do at all, will it? You said you'd have it.'

‘I mean, I do have it, but I don't have change. I've only got fifty pound notes.'

The four of them looked at one another like they'd just found pirate treasure. Alfie whooped manically, like a hyena, and Luke did some stupid hand-dance thing with him. God, did I hate bullies.

‘That'll just have to do, won't it?' spat Radclyffe. She held out her hand flat, expecting her payment right that instant. Then they all did the same. Four outstretched palms.

‘Come on,' said Clem. ‘I'm tired. Hurry up and give us our money.'

‘OK,' said Fallon, ‘but you'll have to come in and get it.'

‘No, we'll wait here, thanks,' said Luke with a laugh as he looked at Alfie. ‘You don't give us orders, Hayes.'

‘Are you afraid of my house or something?' asked Fallon.

Luke laughed again. ‘Yeah right, I'm sooooo afraid of your weirdo farmhouse.'

‘And your weirdo mum,' Clem added.

‘Come in then,' she said, stepping aside.

Luke looked back at the others. No way were they going in. And no way was he going to look like some baby in front of them. He gave a long, dramatic sigh and threw his bike down. ‘I'll do it then. You lot wait out here.'

‘I wanna come, I wanna come,' said Radclyffe, dropping her bike and clinging on to her brother's hand.

‘Christ's sake, come on then,' he snarled.

Fallon stood aside and allowed him to step over the threshold of the lean-to, closely followed by his little sister. They moved about the place like they were in a haunted house, staring at the cages, smelling the air, looking above them in case anything should fall from the plastic roof.

‘Is Roadkill Rosie here?' asked Radclyffe, in a smaller voice.

‘No, don't worry. She won't be back for ages. Uh, it's just through there,' said Fallon, allowing them to step in front of her towards the Skin Room. ‘In our basement. It's through that door, just down the steps. After you.'

I thought we were home and dry then. But Luke stopped and looked at her. ‘You go down and get it. We'll wait up here.'

‘I can't,' said Fallon. ‘I've hurt my ankle, so I can't make the stairs. Honestly, it won't take a moment. Just go on down the stairs and you'll find it in a pile on the table. There's a fifty pound note for each of you. I'll put the light on and wait here.'

That was amazingly quick thinking, I thought. And with that, Luke started towards the door, his sister following after him, like they were navigating through the rooms of some house of horrors. I guess, in their minds, that's exactly what it was. They'd heard all the stories. The rumours about Rosie. That was exactly why they picked on Fallon; it made her different. Vulnerable.

So, really, you could say we were giving them what they wanted. We were just illustrating the stories for them in black and white.

Or, rather, red.

Down the steps they went, creak, creak, creak, wobble.

‘Where's the light?' called Luke.

Once Luke and his sister were both clear of the door, Fallon flicked up the light switch as I yanked on the string and…

SLAM!

Fallon lunged forwards and turned the key, trapping the Shaws inside the Skin Room. One of them – Luke – started banging and kicking on the door at once, shouting all sorts of things, too muffled to translate through the thickness of the wood. The other one – Radclyffe – just screamed and screamed and screamed.

‘They're going to be traumatised for life if we leave them in there too long,' said Fallon, chewing on her thumbnail and looking across at me.

‘Not nearly long enough yet. Give it a couple of minutes. Let that blinking light do its thing. Let them see that bath full of blood.'

‘I wonder if the boys are ready?'

As if in answer, there came an enormous
SPLASH
from outside in the road, followed by two sets of shouts and another prolonged scream. I ran to the lean-to door and
yanked it open to find the two other Shaw siblings lying in the road beside their bikes, soaked through with bright red blood.

‘ARGH! AARGH! AARGH!' screeched Clem, over and over again. ‘WHAT IS IT? ALFIE! ALFIEEEEE!'

Alfie shuddered and slipped as he tried to get to his feet, wiping his eyes on his sopping T-shirt. ‘Oh my God, it's…'

He couldn't finish his sentence – he ran towards the hedge on the opposite side of the road and blew chunks of everything he'd eaten at Harvest Home into the dark ditch.

Clem was still a bloody mess, wailing like her bike had just given birth to her.

We looked up to the window above where Corey and Max were high-fiving and grinning like lunatics, their empty blood buckets dangling from their free hands.

I folded my arms and walked out into the blood-drenched road, towering over Clem. ‘Now, that wasn't a very nice surprise, was it?'

‘Who are you?' she whimpered, shivering in the cool night air.

Her brother returned from the hedge, pulling his bike up onto its wheels. ‘You'll pay for that,' he threatened shakily, stabbing a finger at Fallon. ‘Who's she?'

‘Just a friend,' I said. ‘And she won't pay for it, you're wrong about that.' I pushed him back down into the ditch, with his vomit. ‘If you EVER come back here again, it'll be YOUR blood we're pouring from those buckets. Got it?'

Alfie scrabbled to his feet, but said nothing.

Clem rolled her bike to an upright position. ‘I w-w-w-want to go home, Alfie.'

Her brother looked back at us. ‘Where's Luke? Where's Raddy?'

Fallon looked at me, clearly not knowing what to say. This was my plan.

‘They're inside. In the Skin Room,' I told them.

‘What's that?' asked Clem.

‘Where Roadkill Rosie skins her hides, of course. The ones she collects on the trucks. No one comes out of there alive. Sorry. Well, best be running along now then. Nighty night.'

‘No, wait!' Alfie cried, grabbing my arm. I turned and looked at him, glaring like he'd just made the biggest mistake of his life. ‘Please. We're sorry. Please, let them go.'

‘No,' said Max, appearing in the doorway behind us, with Corey standing beside him. They looked like bouncers. Bespectacled, desperately-in-need-of-a-few-bench-presses bouncers, but still, there they were, looking mean, and I was glad of it. ‘You'll just have to tell their mum and dad they're not coming back.'

Clem started crying harder. ‘I want Mum, Alfie!'

‘She's going to kill us when she hears we've been back here,' he muttered, wringing out his T-shirt on the roadside. ‘You've got to let them go. Please, look, we're sorry.'

‘No,' snapped Corey, shoving past Max and getting right in his face. ‘You've asked for this, all of you. We know what you've done. And this is the price you're going to pay.'

They both just looked at us, all of us in turn, like we were the Avengers or something. They didn't know what to say, or what to do. I felt twelve feet tall.

Alfie scowled at Corey. ‘What's wrong with him then?'

‘What's wrong with you?' I said, stepping forward. ‘That's what I want to know.' I pointed to the spot just in front of me where I wanted them both to stand. They came, both shivering and on the verge of tears.

‘If you want your cousins out of that room, you better
be nice. You better give back ALL the money you've taken from Fallon over the summer. And you better promise her that you will never ride your bikes past here ever again.'

‘What do we get in return?' asked Alfie.

‘Your cousins don't get turned into meat pies.
That's
what you get.'

‘We don't have the money.' Clem sniffled, her little body shivering in the night air. ‘We spent it all on sweets.'

‘We'll have the sweets then,' said Max, holding his hand out expectantly.

‘We don't have them here,' said Alfie. ‘They're at home. Under my bed.'

I looked at Fallon. She stepped in front of me. ‘I'll let your cousins go. But first thing tomorrow morning, you better leave those sweets on the doormat with a little note apologising for what you've done. Otherwise…'

‘Otherwise what?' sobbed Clem.

Fallon wasn't saying anything. Corey wasn't saying anything either. And Max was just staring at me. So I had to come up with the ultimate threat, right there and then.

‘Otherwise, we'll be watching you. When you go to bed at night, when you're walking to school, when you're riding your bikes through the railway tunnel. We'll grab you when you least expect us, and we will put you into sacks. Then we'll sling you in Rosie's truck with all the other DEAD BODIES. She'll bring you back here. To the Skin Room. And she'll chop you up one by one and drop you in the Mincer. And then you'll probably end up inside a pie, which we'll leave on your parents' doorsteps.
That's
what we'll do.'