‘Safe house,’ he said. ‘Go in and wait. Someone will come.’ As I was hesitating, he explained, ‘Wait for someone to come. You might have to wait till dawn but they’ll come.’
‘Who are you?’ I asked him.
‘I’m Giff. If you need me, don’t ask.’
I turned and got out of the car.
‘Get some sleep,’ he suggested, and with that he accelerated out of the gutter, the passenger door flapping wildly until he took the corner on two wheels and it slammed shut. Feeling exposed, I tried the door of the house. It was locked. Panic threatened to rise in me. There was no access down the side of the house and the windows in the front room were all closed. I wondered about the houses on either side but Giff had been specific. Not knowing what else to do I took off my leather jacket and balled it around my fist and punched a hole in one of the windows.
I jumped in and landed in a crouch. Looking around to get my bearings I wondered if I should answer the phone. Then, seconds after, I couldn’t work out why I’d thought that. To start with, the phone wasn’t even ringing.
I had a look around. The house was in slightly better shape than its exterior had suggested; nevertheless, the carpets were threadbare, the balustrades rickety, and there was a fine film of dust stretched over all the surfaces. The floorboards upstairs sagged and groaned under my weight. I placed my boots as lightly as possible. When I was satisfied all the rooms were empty I lit a cigarette and watched the street from an upstairs window. It was dark and quiet. Only the stars allowed me to see fifty yards down the street where I noticed a curious stone or concrete seat fashioned into the wall at an intersection. It was too high up to have been designed for passers-by, so I wondered what its function might be. For all I knew, it could have been neo-utilitarian sculpture.
I could hear dogs barking somewhere off to the right but the house itself remained quiet. When my legs got too tired to allow me to continue standing by the window I went and sat against the wall. I was close enough to the window to hear if anyone came and I was determined not to fall asleep. Cupping my hand to shield the flame I lit another cigarette and waited some more. I concentrated hard on the environment of the house, listening for any sounds at all, and watched the sky for a change in the light.
When I was very young, maybe eight or nine, I came into the house one day to feed the hamster that we kept in a cage in a corner of the dining room.
My father was out at work and my mother was weeding in the back garden. I got down on my hands and knees in front of the cage and peered in. Sometimes, when he wasn’t running in his wheel, Cassidy would lie down behind his water bottle at the back of the cage. At first I couldn’t see him at all and I crawled closer to the cage. He was indeed lying at the back but something about him didn’t look quite right. There was something different about his tiny bulk; his coat was dull. I opened the cage door and gingerly reached my hand in — Cassidy had bitten my mother and me a couple of times. He didn’t move when I touched him lightly with one finger so I prodded him harder to wake him up. He rolled slightly, whereas I would have expected him to spring to life and turn quickly to see what was going on. I pushed him again and he just slid across the straw on the bottom of his cage.
My breath was coming quite fast and I realised I was burning red. Guiltily I looked around to see if by chance my mother had come in and was standing watching. But I was alone.
I picked up the hamster and lifted it out of the cage. It lay in my hand without moving. Normally you would feel its tension as it prepared to jump out of your hands or you would just feel its small, warm pulse beating in your palm. Instead it was just there. I rolled it from one hand to the other to see if I could wake it up. I realised I was grinning nervously and immediately wiped the expression off my face in case someone came in. Turning Cassidy over I looked closely at his face. It looked no different. His eyelids were closed as if he were asleep. I threw his little body up in the air several times and caught it then I put it back in the cage in the same position I had found it.
It was my first experience not only of death, but of the death of something I cared about. And for a while my reaction to it worried me. Why had I thrown it up in the air like a toy? Why had I preferred to leave it for someone else to discover?
In that dark upstairs room I drifted in and out of sleep, half-dreaming about my mother and the pleasure she used to get from weeding and gardening before it became an obsession and her only comfort. As she knelt at the edge of the lawn and rooted through the catmint and rhododendrons for stray grass seedlings and twists of bindweed I would watch from my bedroom window, pictures of footballers and pop stars decorating the wall behind me, and listen to the dogs barking in next door’s garden. Except that the neighbours didn’t have a dog.
I suddenly came wide awake and pricked my ears.
Dogs.
I heard them quite clearly and it wasn’t just a matter of a couple of strays picking over rubble. These were the real thing. I jumped up and ran quietly to the window. The street was empty and light had begun to creep into the sky. I could hear the dogs around the back of the house, maybe not in the garden or yard of the house itself, but pretty fucking close. Too close for my liking. My blind trust in Giff was beginning to look a bit previous. I heard more low growling and scurrying of feet and needed no further encouragement. I crossed the tiny landing and stepped into the back bedroom. Its boards, too, were bare and I had to walk lightly to avoid making a noise. I crept to the window and hugged the wall next to it as I looked outside. My heart raced. Half a dozen strong black dogs came running up the back entry. They stopped outside the gate that led to the little yard directly below my window. With saliva spraying from their snapping jaws they jumped at the gate and thumped it with their thick skulls. They looked like the dog I’d seen from the train. It wouldn’t take a pack of pit bulls very long to break down a simple wooden gate.
Another figure appeared. This was a heavily built man walking with a stoop. I couldn’t make out his features in the darkness. He strode purposefully through the dogs — which parted without a whimper — and rattled the gate.
I was down the stairs in two seconds flat, careless of the racket my boots were making, and at the front door with my hand on the latch as the gate to the back yard gave way. I heard the dogs growl like a single organism as they leapt across the yard and straight into the back door of the house. It splintered on impact. Fuck it, I thought, and yanked open the front door.
The street was deserted.
As I ran I heard the dogs break into the back of the house behind me and I ran faster, wishing I’d thought to shut the front door behind me — every second was vital and there was no point me making it easier for them.
I ran as fast as I could, my boots clumping and jacket buckles jangling. I was hardly inconspicuous. The identical streets closed around me as if they were folding me in. I saw no sign of human activity but I sensed the dogs couldn’t be far behind. I dived down a back entry and almost slipped on the cobbles and long wet grass. Turning right at the end I ran along the entry, the darkened backs of houses and their yards lining both sides of the path. At the end I emerged into a street lit by a meagre handful of dirty orange lights. I heard the car too late. It screeched around the corner and caught me in its full beam. I leapt back into the entry but a man jumped out of the passenger door and seized me before I’d got ten yards. Exceptionally strong, he hauled me back to the car and pushed me in through the rear door. We sped off and I picked myself up off the floor, recognising the black beanie of Giff bobbing above the back of the driver’s seat. There was another man in the car, in the front passenger seat, and he turned to look at me. He was unshaven and had staring bright blue werewolf eyes, but his gaze was neither hostile not self-congratulatory. Only later would I realise what it was.