The Man Who Built the World (23 page)

Red’s fingers tightened around the barrel of the sh
otgun that rested on his lap. He had made sure the safety catch was on, but even so the barrel faced out towards the car window. He didn’t want to set it off by accident.

Didn’t want to waste any shots.

Ian, ever the diplomat, had suggested they talk first with the Meredith sisters, and only get heavy if that got them nowhere, but Red had other ideas. He had let Ian think he was playing along, but the first chance he got those bitches would get a bloody hole right through their pretty little skulls.
Talk
properly
first. Then we’ll talk how Ian wants to talk
.

He didn’t want them bewitching him like before.
He didn’t want their black magic cast over him. He would blow the fucking whores away before they had a chance to look him in the eye. And then he would take back his son.

#

Ian kept his eyes on the road, not really because he needed to, having driven these roads a thousand times, but because he wanted to avoid the smoldering eyes of the man beside him. He could hear a spongy, sticky sound as Red’s sweating fingers peeled on and off of the shotgun barrel, nervously twitching, waiting for his chance to go trigger crazy.

Whatever state Matt now found himself in, Ian doubted he could feel
the same degree of anger that now
poured
from Red like blood from an arterial wound. Red
seethed
, and Ian knew he would have to think fast to prevent real bloodshed from happening very soon.

Whether they were right or not about the Meredith sisters taking Jack, Red had gone beyond reasoning.
Red had a mean streak, an explosive temper, and Ian suspected he really would shoot first, talk later. Anyone could talk strong words. Ian didn’t want to test Red’s by putting himself in the firing line. He began to doubt just how stable Red’s state of mind was at present; after the last few weeks Red could be forgiven for slipping over the edge, for slightly losing his mind.

As long as no one else got hurt because of it.

Ian himself didn’t like to think about the night of Jack’s birth. He had seen what Red had seen, too. The image was etched on his mind. If indeed the sisters had somehow hidden the baby’s death from them, it was a terrible thing.

Ian shook his head.
He just didn’t want to see any more bloodshed. His family’s name wallowed in enough blood already.

There had to be more.
There was
always
more. Bethany had been half Gabrielle after all. Surely she would have said something, would have known what the sisters were planning? She couldn’t have stayed silent while someone took her baby away.

Always more.

Red and Ian had always believed that Jack’s death had toppled Bethany, finished her off, sent her looking for the pills that took her away from them. Ian knew Red didn’t just consider his baby stolen, but his wife murdered.

Ian understood a lot of things.
More with each passing second. There was a reason for Bethany’s suicide, a reason for Red’s murderous rage. But what about the sisters? Why would they steal Red’s baby?

Those words again, drifting hauntingly:
always more.

He knew the village rumours about them.
Not merely sisters, but lovers, also. If it hadn’t been for Gabrielle, there was no doubt he would have lusted after them the same as the rest of the men from the village. Many a brave suitor had walked up to those doors and begged for a single drink, a single dinner date. Incestuous lesbian lovers, so the rumour went, unable to have children of their own because of their chosen sexual orientation.

Perhaps there was the answer.
A child, stolen to satisfy there own maternal needs. But Ian didn’t think so. The country was liberal now, two consenting adults with decent incomes had as fair a chance of adoption as any, sexuality notwithstanding. They had no reason to steal a baby from a village so close to where they lived, a village where they were both feared and mocked in equal measure. No.

More
.

He knew they had been linked to his dead wife, to Gabrielle.
Seventeen years after her death their life together had a dream–like hazy quality. Of their eighteen years together before he
(don’t think it don’t think it don’t think it)
the first eleven had been perfect, almost idyllic. Gabrielle had suffered the odd bout of depression, but had generally seemed happy, contented. Ian still remembered
that
Gabrielle and usually omitted the remainder from his mind.

He opened his thoughts, let her memory in.

In the months up to Bethany’s birth she had begun to get sick a lot, suffer stronger bouts of depression. They had blamed it on morning sickness, and treated it with aspirin and prescription medication. Ian had worried, but only after the birth did Gabrielle begin her slide.

As though Bethany had flicked a switch somewhere inside her mother, Gabrielle’s cond
ition had gradually worsened. She was always sick, always depressed, and as the years passed there was no let up from it. She would show occasional flashes of her past self, the odd glorious day when she would get up from her bed, play with the children, walk in the garden, and
smile
, smile that wonderful, lustrous smile.

But it didn’t last.

The last couple of years were hell on earth. Gabrielle began to
change,
and the Gabrielle Ian knew had disappeared. During those years Ian’s life became a living nightmare. By the end, she was no longer the woman he had married at all.

He squeezed his eyes shut for a second, forgetting about the road.
Those memories could stay away. He didn’t want those back. His wife . . .
his wife
–

He liked to believe her sickness had been earthly, and that she was just that, a woman, lost and cold that he had found lying
in the woods one day. A woman who had lost her way, and had stumbled into love with him.

That she hadn’t fallen from the sky at all.

She had never told him, but he knew there had been a bond between her and the Meredith sisters. There were days when she had gone out and come back hours later, her explanation vague, and rather than suspecting an affair, he had
known
she had been with them, though Gabrielle never, ever admitted to it. Gabrielle had had some friends in the village, but the sisters were set apart, filling in a piece of her mysterious life that even Ian couldn’t know about. The fear of ever losing her had made him stop short of demanding to know.

In the end he had lost her anyway.
But whether he liked it or not, a deep, mysterious acquaintance with his wife meant the sisters weren’t quite as normal as he would like to hope. Something deeper resonated out from them, too.

Despite the shotgun resting on his friend’s knees, and the finger that itched to start pulling the trigger, Ian couldn’t help but feel afraid for Red.
Very afraid. Someone might die tonight, and whomever held the gun would have little bearing.

11

‘I think he’s sick.’

Elaina looked up from her book. ‘What?’

‘Jack
. I think he’s sick.’

Elaina slammed the book shut, the sound enough to make her sister jump.
‘I’ve told you not to fucking call him that. He’s not called
Jack
, or
Jacky
, or any fucking thing, he’s just a baby, and we’ll soon be rid of him.’

‘But that’s his name.’

‘Shut up, you stupid fool. That’s the name
they
gave him, but he’s not theirs anymore. He’s ours, for now.’

Liana said nothing.
She looked down at the baby nestled in her lap. She would die for one of her own. Just to hold something, and call it yours,
all
yours. She sighed. It would never happen, but at least while she had little Jack she could pretend.

‘I think I’ll mix him something,’ she said.
‘He looks too pale.’

‘He’s a baby.
They’re all pale. They’re like little lumps of dough waiting to be baked into bread.’

Liana scowled at the back of her sister’s head from her place on the couch.
She was such a bitch, sometimes. Usually it came naturally, but often Elaina adopted her attitude for the sheer hell of it. Just to see the look on her sister’s face.

‘You’re not just a lump of dough, are you?’ Liana whispered, rubbing the baby’s nose with one finger.
‘You’re a special little thing, aren’t you?’

The baby, its doughy face molding into a smile, cooed back at her.

‘Oh, will you just shut up,’ Elaina scowled. ‘Go and put him down somewhere, let him sleep. Stop playing with him like a fucking spot that won’t heal!’

Liana became suddenly mad.
‘Will you just stop it? All you do all day long is berate me, berate him! It was your idea, remember? To take him?’

Elaina glared at her.
‘Can’t I just get a little peace and quiet? For once?’

‘I’ll give you peace and quiet if you stop getting at me!’

The baby began to cry.

Elaina stood up.
‘Now look what you’ve done. I’ve had enough of this. I’m going out for a walk. Get a bit of fresh air. It’s so bloody stale in here. When I get back I want him put to bed, and I don’t want to hear another sound for the rest of the evening, okay?’

Liana returned her sister’s glare.
‘Just go out.
I
could do with some peace and quiet myself.’

Elaina narrowed her eyes,
her mouth set in stone, then with a flourish she turned and strode to the door. She pulled her coat from its hook in one fluid motion and then she was gone, out into the cold and the fog that hung over their hollow like a funeral veil.

After her sister had gone, Liana ran a finger over Jack’s soft, spongy forehead, breathed a few words and watched as he dropped soundly asleep.
Not really magic, just a little trick, just something to make him sleep a little better. She wouldn’t want to use what magic she had on one so young, didn’t want it messing with his mind.

She shouldn’t use it at all;
it wasn’t hers to use. Whatever she used for good, gave more to her sister for bad, keeping the balance. If her sister used her magic for bad things, Liana gained more to use for good.

But if Liana used too much, Elaina could get sick, and vice versa.
The equivalent of a spoonful could give her sister a cold, a stomachache. Say, enough to make a shallow, egocentric man fall in love with the plainest, least inspiring of girls. Liana saw no wrong in it sometimes; often the purest, longest lasting love was found in the least likely of places. Even when she had no right to meddle. Elaina was the same but opposite; could turn a loving man into an abusive, irrational husband, a caring wife into an adulterous bitch. She saw no wrong in what
she
did, though of course Liana hated her for it, the same way Elaina hated Liana’s uses for their magic. But to use too much, to turn the minds or the destinies of too many in too short a space of time, could spell death for the other twin.

And death for one meant death for the other.

Opposites, yet equal. Different, yet the same.

They both knew it.
Therefore they were naturally conservative with it, despite Elaina’s constant threats of lightning bolts and earth tremors to swallow Liana up. She couldn’t do it, of course. All she could do, all
either
of them could do, was heavily influence, make people believe, make people see what the sisters wanted them to see. Turn their minds towards the vague, turn them away from the obvious. Easy, really. And harmless, in small amounts.

Like the metal scales in their kitchen, a constant balance had to be maintained between them.
The use of small amounts of their magic could be corrected, but a large use could tip the scales over. Like a roof supported by two single walls, if one wall fell, the roof fell. So they were careful.

Because neither particularly wanted to die.

Though in what way were they really alive? They existed here as something
else,
something not quite human but also in a way inextricably linked to everything it was to be human, everything that existed with humanity as its core. They came from another place, unsure how, or why, only that they
were
, and that through them a link to that other place, the place
beyond
mortality, was forged. And therefore a passageway existed.

They felt sure they weren’t alone.
Just as Man hopes he is not alone among the stars, the sisters thought perhaps only in this part of the world, yet they knew of no others like them, others with the same complexities.