The Lonely Dead

Four pairs of eyes open wide, watching the spaces between the trees. Nothing seemed to move.

She tried again. 'If you're there, John, come up here. We want him too. Do this the right way. Come with us.'

Nothing stirred. Nina shook her head.

'Just shadows,' she said. She frowned, then looked up. 'Oh Jesus, great. Now it's starting to snow.'

She was right. Tiny little flakes of white had begun to spiral down.

'Wish you hadn't done that,' Connolly said. 'Sound travels a long way out here. I wouldn't want this guy to know we're coming.'

'I'm familiar with the way sound travels,' she said. 'He'll already know someone's coming. Right, Ward?'

'Yes. And I've got to warn you, Sheriff, it won't make any difference. He won't run, he won't hide. He'll just do what he was going to do.'

The cop reached across his shoulder and pulled his shotgun over into his hands. He stood with it in the port arms position and looked down at me. Though Connolly was ten, fifteen years younger than he'd been, there was something of my father in his eyes: a cool appraisal, and a sense of not really understanding the concept of backing down.

'Okay,' he said. 'Then that's the way it will be.'

The wind was picking up now, and snow swirled around his face.

28

Patrice was colder than she had ever been before in her life. The man had let her put a coat on before leaving the cabin, and for most of the journey she wished she hadn't. When you're moving, a coat is no use to you: it's the parts it doesn't cover, the face and hands — especially hands tied behind you — which get the coldest. All a coat does is sweat you up. But for the two hours they'd now been sitting, waiting, she'd been very grateful for it. Probably dead without it, she knew. Her nose had run a little, and the water had frozen into little icicles in her nose. She'd asked if he could retie her hands in front, so she could keep them warmer, but he'd said no. She knew why. Her arms and shoulders were beginning to hurt. A lot. This was the start of what she knew he would do if he didn't get what he'd come for by sitting still. He thought this would make some difference to what happened here. She thought he was wrong.

The snow began to come down just after four o'clock. The light had begun to die and though some of the flakes sparkled as they fell, others looked like tiny floating shadows. She knew that some of the locals regarded snow as a cross to bear. She didn't. Even after three years, to her it still seemed like magic. It made her sad, sometimes, bringing memories of Bill, and the children when they were much younger; but nobody said all magic was of a happy kind.

The man had seated her close to the steep wall of the gully, which was something. At least she only got the wind from one direction. Meanwhile he sat up on the low bank on the other side of the stream, with his gun on his lap, in utter silence. If he was cold, he didn't show it.

The snow had been falling for maybe twenty minutes, and getting harder, when she saw him suddenly look up. He listened for a moment.

'Hear something?'

'Long distance away,' he said.

'I really have no idea what you're talking about, you know. Tom saw a bear. That's it. I led you out here because you're a very bad man and I think it would be best if you froze to death somewhere you'll never be found.'

'Maybe,' he said. 'I could see you doing that.' He smiled. 'I like you. You remind me of someone.'

'Your mother?'

'No,' he said. 'Not her.'

'Is she still alive?'

He said nothing, and she knew suddenly and with certainty that this man's mother was dead, not buried in a conventional place, and that he knew where the bones lay.

'Were you an only child?'

Henrickson's head swivelled towards her.

She shrugged. 'I'm just moving my mouth to keep my face from freezing solid.' This was true. In teaching she had also discovered that, very occasionally, you could get through to a child by just talking and talking at them. This man wasn't a child, she knew that. He was a psychopath. Perhaps they worked the same. 'Hey — and maybe they'll hear us. Come see what we're talking about. So were you, or not?'

'I became one,' he said, without emotion. 'I had three mothers. All of them are now dead, which gave me strength. I was born in a forest, my father killed my mother, and then people came and killed him too. They kept me and my brother for a while, and then they kept him and got rid of me. People tried to make me live in places, but I didn't, until in the end I lived with my final mother not far from here.'

'Did she treat you badly?'

'Patrice, I am so far beyond pop psychology you wouldn't believe.'

'So who do I remind you of?'

'The woman who was my grandmother for a while.'

Patrice supposed that was something like a compliment, for what that was worth. 'Why do you want to do this?'

'Killing is what animals do. Carnivores kill to eat. Wild dogs kill the young of other wild dogs. Flies lay their eggs in the flesh of dying mammals. They don't care and neither should we. Arab slave traders in Zanzibar would throw sick men and women into the waters of the bay, so as not to pay duty on goods they couldn't sell. Russian peasants in Siberia sold human body parts in the killing winters of the 1920s. We are the animal that will invent flying machines and then crash them into buildings full of our own kind. We are the ones that will rigorously attempt genocide. Humans are animals and we kill and we destroy.'

'I'd like to hear you sounding more like you thought these were bad things.'

'It's neither bad nor good. It's merely the truth. Our species walked into Europe, where beings had lived for hundreds of thousands of years, and within a few millennia it was ours. How do you think that happened?'

'We were better adapted.'

'In one way only. Our advantage was the willingness to kill other human-like creatures. We killed the Neanderthals until we ran out of them and then we started on each other. We don't respect animals like hyenas and vultures, scavengers. We glorify lions, tigers, sharks: animals with fresh blood around their maws. The fact we have words and thumbs and delusions of spiritual grandeur makes no difference. There is no evil. There is no good. There is only behaviour, and this is ours.'

'So go kill someone already. You obviously have before, right?'

He didn't answer, which was somehow worse. Frozen though she was, Patrice felt the flesh on her neck crawl. She knew she was with someone who did not understand what others understood. 'So go kill some other human. There's millions of us. Why not go kill some more of them?'

'Because it's time to do this.'

'So say the voices, right?'

'No one has done this for many lifetimes. They've killed other things. Symbols of power, women, babies. They're all just standing in for the wild man, the real sacrifice.'

'For God's sake — and just how is that supposed to work?'

'Because it does.'

'You kill something, and somehow that retunes the music of the spheres? You really believe that?'

'It's true, and if you'd been born only a few hundred years ago you'd know it. But we forget. Everyone, even those who should know better. Now we believe in flossing instead. We believe it matters which long-distance operator we choose. We try not to tread on the cracks.'

'You're insane,' she said.

'I don't think so.' His eyes were sharp in the gathering gloom. 'And your opinion is of no interest to me.'

'Don't tell me anything else then. I don't want to hear it.'

'Fine. But you should know this. The grandmother I mentioned?'

She swallowed.

'I killed her. We were helping her down the stairs, and I gave her a nudge before I even realized the idea had come into my head. I was twelve years old. I know it's what she really wanted. She died fast and well. If your friends don't show up soon, you're going to die too. But it's going to be very, very slow. People ten thousand miles away will turn in their sleep.'