The Killing Lessons (2 page)

Nell ran.

Telling herself it wasn’t a gunshot.

Knowing it was.

The ground was a cracked ice floe in a fast current moving against her. Her face was overfull, her hands crammed with blood. There was a busyness to the air, as if it were filled with whispering particles. Details were fresh and urgent: the soft crunch of the snow; the kitchen’s smell of just-baked cookies; a complicated knot in the oak floor’s grain; the deep maroon of Josh’s Converse sneakers by the living room door, light coming through the lace holes.

Her mother lay on her side at the bottom of the stairs. Blood pooled around her, jewelly dark, with a soft sheen. Her skirt was off and her panties were looped around her left ankle. Her hair was wrong. Her eyes were open.

Nell felt herself swollen and floating. This was a dream she could will herself out of. Kicking up from underwater you held your breath through the heaviness until you hit the thin promise of the surface, then sweet air. But she was kicking and kicking and there was no surface, nothing to wake to. Just the understanding that the world had been planning this her whole life, and everything else had been a trick to distract her. The house, which had always been her friend, was helpless. The house couldn’t do anything but watch, in aching shock.

Her mother’s bare legs bicycled slowly in the blood. Nell wanted to cover them. It was terrible, the pale flesh of her mother’s buttocks and the little scribble of varicose veins on her left thigh uncovered like that, in the front hall. Her mouth went
Mommy
…
Mommy
…
Mommy
… but no sound came, just rough breath, a solid thing too big for her throat. Her mother blinked. Moved her hand through the blood and raised her finger to her lips.
Shshsh
. The gesture left a vertical red daub, like a geisha’s lipstick. Nell staggered to her and dropped to her knees.

‘Mommy!’

‘Run,’ her mother whispered. ‘They’re still here.’

Her mother’s eyes fluttered closed again. It reminded Nell of all the times they’d given each other butterfly kisses, eyelashes against cheek.

‘Mommy!’

Her mother’s eyes opened.

‘Run to Sadie’s. I’m going to be all right but you have to run.’

There was a sound of furniture moving upstairs.

‘Now!’ her mother gasped. She sounded furious. ‘Go now! Quick!’

Something moved much closer. In the living room.

Her mother gripped her by the wrist and spat: ‘You run right now, Nell. I’m not kidding. Do it or I’m going to be angry. Go. Now!’

To Nell, backing away from her mother, it was as if a skin that joined the two of them was tearing. She kept stopping. There was a fierce emptiness in her ankles and knees and wrists. She couldn’t swallow. But the further away she got, the more vigorously her mother nodded,
yes, yes, keep going, baby, keep going.

She made it all the way to the open back door before the man stepped out of the living room.

He had coppery hair in greasy curls that hung all the way down to his thinly bearded jaw. Pale blue eyes that made Nell think of archery targets. His face was moist and his dirty-fingernailed hands looked as if they’d thawed too fast. Dark oily jeans and a black puffa jacket with a rip in the breast through which the soft grey lining showed. His feet would stink, Nell thought. He looked tense and thrilled.

‘Hey, cunt,’ he said to Rowena, smiling. ‘How’re you holding up?’

Then he turned and saw Nell.

The moment lasted a long time.

When Nell moved, she thought of the way the doe had sprung away into the forest. Its head had jerked to the right as if it had been yanked on an invisible rein, then it had twisted and flung itself as if the rest of its body was a fraction slower and had to catch up. It was the way she felt, turning and running, as if her will were a little maddening distance ahead of her, straining to haul her body into sync.

The space around her was heavy, something she had to wade through. At the beach once on vacation in Delaware she’d been standing on tiptoe in the ocean, the bottle-green water up to her chin, and Josh had said, Oh my God, Nell, shark! Right behind you! Hurry! And though she’d been certain – or almost certain – he was kidding, there was the agony of the water’s weight, soft and sly and fighting her, slowing her, in cahoots with the shark.

Josh.

Mom.

I’m going to be all right but you have to run.

I’m going to be.

All right.

‘All right’ meant later, tomorrow, Christmas, days and weeks and years, breakfast in the untidy kitchen, the smell of toast and coffee, TV in the evening, drives into town, Sadie coming over, the scent of her mother’s hand cream, conversations like the ones they’d been having lately when they talked woman-to-woman, somehow—

Something crashed behind her. She looked back into the house.

The red-haired man was picking himself up from the hallway floor, laughing, saying: ‘What the fuck, bitch?’ Then shaking his left leg to dislodge Rowena’s hand from his ankle. Something in Nell knew it was the last of her mother’s strength. It was the last of
her
strength. And yet out of her exhaustion an impulse pushed her and her legs moved, barely touching the packed snow she and Josh had beaten down on their walks to the forest.

She was running.

It seemed impossible, she was so empty. The lightest breeze would lift her into the air like a fall leaf.

But she was running. She had twenty yards on him.

Cunt
.

The word was dark and thick with dirt. She’d heard it maybe twice before in her life, she couldn’t remember where.

How’re you holding up
? His smile when he’d asked that meant nothing you could say would stop him doing what he was doing. It would just make him do it more.

She wanted to go back to her mother. She could stop, turn, say to the man: I don’t care what happens, just let me cover my mom’s legs and put my arms around her. That’s all I want. Then you can kill me. The longing to stop was so powerful. The way her mother’s eyelids had closed and opened, as if it were a difficult thing she had to concentrate on, very carefully. It meant… It meant…

The swish of his arms against the puffa jacket, the thud and squeak of his boots in the snow. He was very close behind her. The twenty yards had been eaten up. How stupid to think she could outrun him. The long legs and grown-up strength. For the first time she thought:
You’ll never see your mother again. Or Josh.
Her own voice repeated this in her head,
you’ll never see your mother again
,
mixed with the man’s
hey, cunt
, and her mother saying,
Yes but how
much
do you love me
…?

She knew she shouldn’t look back but she couldn’t help it.

He was almost within touching distance, red hands reaching for her. In the glimpse she saw his mouth open in the coppery beard, small teeth tobacco-stained, the pale blue eyes like a goat’s, his sharp nose with long, raw nostrils. He looked as if he were thinking about something else. Not her. He looked worried.

The glance back cost her. She stumbled, felt the ground snag the toe of her left boot, threw her hands out in front of her for the fall.

His fingertips swiped the hood of her jacket.

But he’d overreached.

She stayed – just – on her empty legs, and he went down hard behind her with a grunt and a barked ‘
Fuck
.’

Her mother’s eyes saying
go on, baby, go on.

Never again. The golden hare’s faraway life suddenly close to her own.

Things are just things. They don’t have feelings. They don’t even know you exist.

Nell could hear herself sobbing. There was a bloom of warmth in her pants and she realised she’d wet herself.

But she was at the tree line, and the afternoon light was almost gone.

He was still coming. She could hear the pines’ soft crash as he went past them. The forest wasn’t in shock, as the house had been. It had mattered to the house, but in here it barely registered. The smell of old wood and undisturbed snow had always made her think of Narnia, the wardrobe that led to the magical winter kingdom. It made her think of it now, in spite of everything. Her mind was all these useless thoughts, flitting around the image of her mother’s face and the way she’d blinked so slowly and there was a look in her eyes Nell had never seen before, an admission that there was something she couldn’t do, that there was something she couldn’t fix.

Your jacket’s red, fig-brain
, she imagined Josh saying.
Red
.
Don’t make it easy for him.

She crouched behind a Douglas fir and took it off. Black woollen sweater underneath. The cold grabbed her with vicious delight. The jacket lining was navy blue. The smart thing – the Josh thing – would be to turn it inside out and wear it that way. She started – but her hands were faint, distant things to which she’d lost her connection. The hare’s heart was hers, now, beating into her pulse.

She heard him say, ‘Jesus fucking Christ.’

Too close. Get further away then put it back on
.

She ran again. It had got darker. Somewhere under the snow was the off-road trail, but she had no idea if she was on it. The self-absorbed trees gave no clue. And there were her footprints. No matter where she ran he’d know. At least until the last of the light went. How much longer? Minutes. She told herself she only had to keep going for a few minutes.

‘Come here, you little shit,’ his voice said. She couldn’t tell where he was. The firs and the snow packed all the sounds close, like in Megan’s dad’s recording studio. Should she climb up? (She could climb anything. Nell, honey, I wish you’d stop climbing things, her mother had said. Nell had said: I won’t fall. To which her mother had replied: I’m not worried you’ll fall. I’m worried you’ve got monkey genes.)
Should
she climb up? No, the footprints would stop and he’d know:
Here I am! Up here!
She stumbled forward. Found firmer snow. Her legs buckled. Her palms stung when she hit the ground. She got up again. Ran.

The land sloped, suddenly. Here and there black rock broke the snow. She was forced downhill. The drifts went sometimes above her knees. Her muscles burned. It seemed a long time since she’d heard him. She’d lost all sense of direction. Breathing scored her lungs. She struggled back into her jacket. It was dark enough now for the red not to matter.

A branch snapped. She looked up.

It was him.

Thirty feet above her and to her left. He’d seen her.

‘Stay there!’ he spat. ‘Stop fucking running. Jesus, you little—’

Something rolled under his foot and he fell. The slope pitched him towards her. He couldn’t stop himself.

It seemed to Nell that she’d only turned and taken three pointless steps when she heard him cry out. But this time she didn’t look back. All she knew was the tearing of her muscles and the burn of every breath. Stones turned her ankles. Branches stung her exposed hands and face. Something scratched her eye, a mean little detail in the blur. The only certainty was that any second his hands would be on her. Any second. Any second.

Upstairs in the house Xander King watched the boy on the bedroom floor die then sat down at the desk’s little swivel chair. The world had come alive, the way it did, but it wasn’t right. This had been a mistake, and it was Paulie’s fault. Paulie was getting on his nerves. Paulie was going to fuck everything up. It was ridiculous, really, that he’d let Paulie stick around so long. Paulie was going to have to go.

It was a relief to Xander to realise this, to know it for certain, despite the inconvenience, the work involved, the distraction. Anything you knew for certain was a relief.

The cool smell of new paint played around him, from the empty room across the hall. (He’d done a dreamy sweep of the upper floor: the woman’s bedroom with its odours of clean linen and cosmetics; another filled with neatly boxed stuff – vinyl records, Manila files, a sewing machine; a bathroom with the fading light on its porcelain and tiles – and the half-painted fifth room, small, with a wardrobe and a chest of drawers draped in painters’ tarps. A roller and tray, brushes in a jar of turpentine, a stepladder. It had reminded him of Mama Jean, up
her
stepladder in the lounge at the old house, wearing her sour-smelling man’s overalls, her face flecked with white emulsion.)

The boy’s TV was on, with the sound down.
The Big Bang Theory
. Another show like
Friends
, with too many bright colours. Xander found the remote on the desk and flicked through the channels, hoping to find
Real Housewives of Beverly Hills
. Or
Real Housewives of New York
. Or
Real Housewives of Orange County
. There were a lot of shows he was drawn to.
The Millionaire Matchmaker
.
Keeping Up with the Kardashians. America’s Next Top Model. The Apprentice.
But no luck. His body was rich. He teased himself a little, looking at the dead kid’s blown-open guts then looking away, feeling the richness come and go in his limbs, as if it were a dial in himself he could turn up and down at will.

The kid’s guitar had fallen face down on the rug. The rug was Native American style. Which reminded Xander of a fact he knew: white settlers had given the Indians blankets infected with diseases in the hope that they’d all get sick and die. There were certain facts he was familiar with. Certain facts that made sense in the way that so much else didn’t. So much else not only didn’t make sense but exhausted him. He was constantly struggling with exhaustion.

Remembering the disease-blankets made his beard itch. A beard. He hadn’t shaved for four days. His routines had been suffering. The battery shaver was dead. The good thing about the battery shaver was that you could do it without a mirror.

He thought about the woman downstairs. He would go down to her soon, but for now it was very good just to sit and enjoy the richness. It was a wonderful thing to know he could go down to her any time he liked. It was a wonderful thing to know she wasn’t going anywhere. He could go anywhere and do anything, but everything and anything she wanted to do depended on him. His face and hands had the plump warmth that was both impatience and all the time in the world.

But still, it wasn’t right. Too many things, recently, hadn’t been right. There was a way of doing what he needed to do, and lately he’d been losing sight of it. The cunt in Reno, for example. That had been Paulie’s fault too. Paulie definitely had to go.