What You Make It (39 page)

The old woman teetered, without making a sound, and then her centre of gravity was all wrong and she just tumbled over sideways, over the edge and down the stairs.

Thump, crash, thud, splat. Like a loose bag of sticks.

Ricky walked briskly down the stairs after her, reached the bottom bare seconds after she did. Held back from kicking her head, which would have been risky and was clearly unnecessary. Huge dent in the skull already, eyes turned upwards and out of sight. Arm twisted a strange way, one leg bent back on itself. The usual anti-climax.

Job done.

He stepped quickly over the body and to the kitchen, stopping Nicola already on her way out. She ran into him, crashed against his body. He grabbed her shoulders, warm through the thin T-shirt.

‘What happened? I heard a crash.’

Usually he killed the kid at this point, before they got hysterical and made too much noise or ran out of the house. Ricky pushed Nicola gently back into the kitchen, felt his temperature rising. Needed her alive to do things with, but he couldn't do them here. ‘Nothing. Just an accident. Mrs Harris fell down the stairs.’

‘Grandma?’

‘She's not your grandma, sweetie. You know that.’

‘We've got to get help …’

Ricky smiled down at her. ‘We will. That's exactly what we'll do. We'll get in the car, go find one of the security wagons. They'll help her out. She'll get fixed up and we'll catch the end of the parade.’

The girl was near tears. ‘I want to stay here with her.’

He pretended to think about it, then shook his head. ‘Can't do that. Security gets here while I'm away, find you with an old lady at the bottom of the stairs, what they going to think? They're going to think you pushed her.’

‘They won't. She was my grandma. Why would I hurt her?’

Ricky glared at her, good humour fast disappearing. ‘She wasn't your fucking grandma. Just some old woman.’

Nicola pushed hard against him, momentarily rocking him on his heels. ‘She was
too.
She knew about me. She knew things. She said not to worry about my mom any more. She said she loved me.’

Ricky lashed out with his hand, shoved the kid hard. She flew back, ricocheted off the table and knocked the coffee pot flying. It struck the wall, spraying brown gunk everywhere, just as Nicola crashed to the floor. Ricky cursed himself. Not clever. Just going to make it more difficult to get her out of the house, plus it was going to look like signs of a struggle. He took a deep
breath, stepped towards her. Maybe he was going to have to just kill her after all.

‘Nicola? Are you okay, dear?’

Ricky froze, foot just hitting the floor. Turned slowly round.

Grandma stood in the doorway. One eye fluttered slowly, the one below the huge dent which pulled most of the side of her face out of kilter. The arm was still bent way out of place. Her body was completely fucked up, but somehow she'd managed to drag herself to the door, to her feet.

Nicola struggled into a sitting position against the wall behind Ricky. ‘Grandma – are you all right?’

Of course she's not fucking all right, Ricky thought. No way.

Grandma leaned against the door frame, as if tired. ‘I'm fine, dear. Just had a little fall, isn't that right Rick?’ Her working eye fixed on him.

Ricky felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise like a thousand tiny erections. Then her other eye stopped flickering. Closed for a moment, reopened – and then he had two strong eyes looking at him. Tough old bitch.

Ricky reached for the table, grabbed the rolling pin lying there. This job was getting very fucked up, but he was going to finish it now.

‘Close your eyes, dear,’ Grandma said. She wasn't talking to him, but the kid. ‘Would you do that, for Grandma? Just close your eyes for a while.’

‘Close them tight?’ Nicola asked, voice small.

‘Yes, close them extra tight,’ Grandma nodded, trying to smile. ‘And I'll tell you when you can open them again.’

Ricky saw the girl shut her eyes and cover her ears. He shook his head, turned back to the old woman, rolling pin held with loose ease. He took a measured stride towards her, not hurrying. Ricky had been in bad situations all his life, had been beaten up and half-killed on a hundred occasions, starting with the times that happened in his own bedroom, a room that had no posters on the walls or books on shelves or little
figures of cartoon animals. Ricky's old man hadn't believed in make-believe either; was proud of being cynical – ‘That's what I am, boy, I'm nobody's fool’ – and working the angles and telling God's honest truth however fucking dull it was. His lessons had been painful, but Ricky knew he'd been right.

Ricky wasn't afraid of an old woman, no matter how tough she might be, and he just grinned at her, looking forward to seeing what the pin was going to do to her face. She looked back at him, head tilted up, grey hair awry and skin papery, and then her head popped back out.

One minute her skull was caved in, the next it was back where it should be, like someone pumped exactly the right amount of air back into a punctured balloon. It made a sound like cellophane.

Ricky gawped, arm aloft.

Grandma swallowed, blinked, then did something with her fucked-up arm. Swung it around from behind her – and as it came it seemed to become more solid, find the right planes to rotate on again. She bent it experimentally, found it worked, and used it to pat her dry hair more or less back into place.

‘You're a very bad boy, Ricky,’ she said, softly, too quietly for Nicola to hear. ‘And bad boys never see Santa Claus. Hear what I'm saying, motherfuck?’

Before Ricky could even process this sentence, Margaret Harris had hurled herself at him. He tried to turn, bring the pin down, but only managed to twist halfway round at the waist. She smacked into him sideways, and the two of them spun off the corner of the table to crash into the wall. Ricky felt his nose bend and melt, and realized there was going to be blood to clean up as well as everything else.

He tried to push the old woman away, but she looped a fist straight into his face. It cracked hard against his cheekbone, far too hard. The rolling pin went spinning across the floor.

Ricky kicked and scrambled, lashing out feet, hands and elbows in a flurry of compact violence. Each time he thought he was finally going to be able to dislodge her, she seemed to
gain a notch in strength. They rolled back and forth under the table, smashing a chair to firewood, and out the other side. Ricky heard Nicola squeal, and a small part of his mind was able to hope their neighbours hadn't heard. Then he found himself with two gnarled hands tight around his throat, and almost wished they had, and were sending help. For him.

He finally managed to pull his knee up under the old bitch, and gradually forced his hands in between hers. When they were in position he steadied himself for a second, got his breath – and then threw everything he had, chopping his hands in opposite directions, and kicking out hard.

The old woman flew a yard and hit the stove like an egg.

Ricky was on his feet almost immediately, hands on his knees and coughing like a bastard. When he swallowed, something clicked alarmingly in his throat. Nicola was still squeaking, eyes shut, but he heard it as from a great distance. He could taste his blood, and see it spattered on the wall and floor – in amongst the coffee and a few lumps of grey hair that he managed to yank out of the robot.

A fucking animatronic. Had to be. He'd been set up. John Harris had changed his mind, or more likely been a plant from minute one and there'd never been a real Grandma Harris. Fuckers. Wonder World weren't working with the cops. They were settling things their own way.

And so would Ricky. The job was over, and it didn't matter how much mess he left. He was getting out, and then going to find Mr Harris. The fee had just gone up to include everything the bastard owned, including his wife. And his daughter.

Grandma Harris was slumped on the floor, back against the cooker. Her throat was arced up like a twisted branch, a perfect target, but jerked back into position as Ricky pulled out his gun. No matter. The face would do just as well.

He held the gun in a straight-arm grip, sighted down the barrel.

‘Don't even fucking think about it,’ the rolling pin said.

Ricky turned very slowly to look. ‘Excuse me?’

It had grown legs, and was standing with little hands on where its hips would be. Two stern eyes glared out of the wooden cylinder of its body, and it looked like a strange wide crab.

Ricky stared at it. Knew suddenly that it wasn't a machine, but an actual rolling pin with eyes and arms. He fired at it. The pin flipped out of the way, then switched direction and flick-flacked towards him, like a crazy little wooden gymnast. Ricky backed hurriedly, fired another shot. It missed, and the rolling pin flicked itself into the air like a muscular missile. Ricky wrenched his head out of the way just in time, and the pin embedded itself in the wall.

‘Careful,’ said the wall, slowly opening its eyes.

Over at the stove, Grandma Harris was pulling herself upright. Ricky blinked at her. She smiled, a sweet old lady smile that wasn't for him. Ricky decided he didn't have to mop up this mess. He'd go straight to talk with John Harris. He fired a couple of rounds into the wall, just between its huge eyes. It made a grumpy sound, but didn't seem much inconvenienced. A huge mouth opened sleepily, as if yawning, as it was only just getting up to speed. The pin meanwhile pushed itself out with a dry popping sound, and turned its beady eyes on Ricky.

‘Shit on this,’ Ricky muttered, as it scuttled towards him. He swung a kick at the rolling pin, sent it howling across the room. Fired straight at Margaret Harris, but didn't wait to see if it hit.

He turned on his heel in the kitchen door, bounded across the hallway and yanked at the door. It wouldn't open, and when Ricky tried to pull his hand away, he saw the handle had turned into a brown wooden hand and was gripping his like he was a prime business opportunity and they were testing each other's strength. Ricky braced his foot against the wall and tugged, for the first time hearing the sound of the beams whispering above. He glanced up and saw some of them were wriggling in place, limbering up, getting ready for action. He didn't want to see their action.

The door handle wasn't letting go, and so he placed the muzzle of the gun against it and let it have one.

It took the tip of one of Ricky's fingers with it, but the fucker let go. Ricky reared back, kicked the door with all his strength. It splintered and he barrelled through it, tripped and fell full length on the lawn. Face to face with the grass for a moment, he saw that he'd been right, and there was a little face on every blade. He heard a noise like a million little voices tuning up and knew that its song wasn't likely to be one he wanted to hear.

He scrabbled to his feet and careened down the path towards the car, bloody hand scrabbling for the keys. Before he could get even halfway there two trash cans came running round from next door. They made it to the car before him, and started levering one side off up the ground. Meanwhile the rolling pin shot out of the house from behind him, narrowly missed his head, and went through the windscreen of the car like a torpedo. Barely had the spray of glass hit the ground before the pin emerged the other side, turned in mid-air and looped back to punch through a door panel. It kept going, faster and faster, looping and punching, until the car began to look like a battered atom being mugged by a psycho electron.

Ricky began to realize just how badly his hand hurt, and that the car wasn't going to be a viable transportation option. He diverted his course in mid-stride, just heading for the road, for a straight line to run. He cleared the sidewalk, barely keeping his balance, and leaned into the turn. Ricky could run. He'd had the practice, down many dark streets and darker nights, and always running away instead of to. The way was clear.

Then a vehicle appeared at the corner in front of him, and he understood what the grass had been singing. Not a song, but a siren.

Wonder World's designers hadn't stinted themselves on the cop wagon. It was black and half as big as a house, all superfins and intimidating wheel arches spiked with chrome. The windows in the sides were blacker still, and the doors in the back might just as well have had ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE scrawled right across them.

Ricky skidded to a halt, whirled around. An identical vehicle
had moved into position just the other side of the remains of his car. Behind it a bunch of mushrooms and toadstools were moving into position.

The doors of the first wagon opened, and a figure got out each side. Both seven foot tall, with very long tails and claws that glinted. Bud and Slap, though rats, had been friendly rats in all the countless cartoons they'd appeared in over the last thirty years. They were almost as popular as Loopy and Careful and China Duck, and even Ricky recognized them. Cute, well-meaning villains, they always ended up joining the right side in the end.

But this Bud and Slap weren't like that. These toons were just for Ricky. As he held his ground, knowing there was nowhere to run, they walked towards him with heavy tread. They were stuffed into parodies of uniforms, torn at the seams and stained with bad things. Bud had a lazy, damaged eye, and was holding a big wooden truncheon in an unreassuring way. Slap had a sore on his upper lip, and kept running a long blue tongue over it, to collect the juice. Both had huge guns stuffed down the front of their uniforms. At least that's what Ricky hoped they were. From five yards away he could smell the rats' odour, the gust of sweat and stickiness and decay, and for a moment catch an echo of all the screams and death rattles they'd heard.

‘Hey there, Ricky,’ said Slap, winking. His voice was low and oily, full of unpleasant good humour. ‘Got some business with you. Lots of different kinds of business, actually. You can get in the wagon, or we can start it right here. What d'you say?’

Behind him Bud giggled, and started to undo his pants.

Nicola stood at the window with Grandma, and watched the parade in the road. It wasn't the real parade, like the one in the Beautiful Realm where they had fireworks and Careful Cat and Loopy, but they were going to see that tomorrow. This was a little parade, with just Bud and Slap, and Percival Pin and Terrance and Terry the Trash Cans: sometimes they put on little parades of their own, Grandma said, just because they enjoyed it.