Duff Alley gets very empty, and the conversation there becomes very muted. They get drunk, huddle together, and after dark they whisper that Iron Kurt has come for them. And now I’m
shit
scared.
Another trip to the piss-stained steps outside Michael’s flat. He’s almost the only one left, and I need to know what he knows. To find out if he can reassure me. Keith left for Cork. William found a winning lottery ticket in the street and moved to the Caribbean. Some other gardai told the Duff Alley crazies to get out, so they’re meeting somewhere else now.
When I knock on the door, I hear a wet thudding noise from inside. When I try the handle, it’s unlocked. When I should turn and run away, I push it open and walk in.
The sickly-sweet smell of blood on the air. The acrid spike of human waste. The cloying taste of someone else’s sweat. Michael lies in a crimson-splashed, naked tangle in the middle of his living room floor. The carpet around him soaked black with blood. Legs splayed at an unnatural angle, and pink-yellow ribbons of intestines running from the torn and tattered gash that yawns between them.
He twitches, and I realize he’s still alive.
“Michael? Can you hear me?”
Whimper. Twitch. One eye creaks open and fixes me with a stare of utter agony and shock.
“Who did this? What the fuck’s going on?”
“It… Kurt… didn’t…”
“Kurt? You’re sure? Christ.”
“Said… name… site… to punish… I didn’t…”
I should be calling an ambulance. I should be calling my colleagues. “Where is he now?”
Michael’s eye looks down. Pleading. Betrayed. “You said… wouldn’t… website… I… good…”
He thinks I did it. “I didn’t tell him,” I say. “Jesus, Michael, I wouldn’t even know how. I swear to you.”
“He… told...” Michael smacks his lips. Dry mouth. Lost too much fluid already. Bleeding out. Dying.
“What did he tell you?”
“No… he asked… who… gave my name…” Smack. Smack. “I… told him… you…”
As Michael’s head drops to the carpet, something thumps out in the stairwell and my heart jumps into my mouth. Again I think about running, but I don’t. Again I think about calling the station, but to tell them what? That some kind of phantom is stalking lunatics on my beat?
I step outside, check the stairs with shaky steps and trembling hands. And there’s nothing there.
When I come back down to Michael’s flat, the body is gone. So is the blood that soaked the carpet a moment ago. Is the smell gone as well? I can’t tell. But there’s no sign that Michael was ever here. And was he – could I be imagining it? Could all this be in my head, a product of my own fear?
Fuck. Fuck.
When I search the flat, I can’t see any of the protective trinkets the others had. He was an unbeliever.
I’m not. Not now.
When I walk away from Michael’s, I see the tall figure of a bald man watching me from the trees on the far side of the park across the street. He’s massive, and bare-chested. The dark outlines of tattoos that litter his skin flicker and swirl like flames. He points at me, long and hard, then slides back into the undergrowth.
So now it’s been four days since then, since I called in sick. Since I barricaded myself into my flat to wait for the end. In the yellow glare of the 40-watt bulb, in the air that reeks of stale sweat and fear, I’m protected by a butcher’s knife and an Iron Cross. A spray paint swastika on every wall. A replica of one of those Nazi imperial eagles they’d carry everywhere in those films. Terry’s foil-lined box with his tableau of half a dozen toy German WWII soldiers.
Maybe they’ll help me. I certainly won’t step beyond their protective radius.
Because Kurt is coming to kill me. His creator. To close the circle. I’m the last one he’s looking for here. And he won’t let me go. I know it.
Soon I’ll hear his footsteps on the stairs. Slow, heavy, deliberate.
Thump.
Thump.
Thump.
Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
THE BRICK by Natasha Cooper
It all started with the broken window. That was what was so infuriating. If those wretched children hadn’t found the brick next door’s cowboy builders had left in the front garden and thought it would be fun to smash a big bit of clean glass, none of it would have happened. We’d still have been OK; not in seventh heaven or anything extravagant like that, but OK.
The randomness of it still makes me swear. It needn’t have happened; none of it. That’s what gets to me when I let myself think about it.
There I was peacefully sitting on a beanbag on the floor (we’d sanded the boards by then but not varnished them and they looked a bit splintery; but they were clean, which was something after the state we’d found them in when we tore up the old lino) reading short stories for a prize. They were all about spouses killing each other, of course: short stories for prizes nearly always are. And I’d been congratulating myself rather because however livid I’d been with John, I’d never, even in my wildest, most secret fantasies, wanted to kill him. Stiffen him, maybe; tell him not to be such a baby and to get on out there and do his bit of the bargain, like I’d always done mine. I mean, I’d given up my job when it was clear that he needed more input than I’d been able to give him while I was working so hard.
It wasn’t only the comfort and the listening and the putting-up with stress-induced sulks, you see; he’d needed a lot more practical help with all sorts of things, and meals suddenly became important to him in a way they’d never been before. We’d always just picked for supper whenever we both got back from work, but suddenly he wanted three courses with both of us sitting down at the table, whenever he got back. And my publishing salary just wasn’t up to paying a housekeeper, not after tax and all the things I’d had to pay for, you know, decent clothes and that sort of thing. So I’d given up. I’d always done a bit of freelance, luckily as it turned out. So when John cracked up, I still had all my contacts in place.
Anyway, where was I? Being on my own all day means that I do get very short of chat, which is why I can’t stop talking when there’s any opportunity. Sorry about that. I’ve lost my drift. Oh, yes, the brick. Well, you see, there I was, sitting by the window, thinking that at least this titchy little South London cottage was a bit lighter than our Kensington house, when this bloody brick crashed through the window and landed by my feet. It must have been in next door’s garden for a while because it was coated with mud and had woodlice clinging to it. You know, those prehistoric-looking horrid little black things.
They were all over the house when we bought it, but once we’d sorted the damp we got rid of most of them. They crunch under your bare feet. In a way that was nearly the worst thing, getting out of bed that first morning in the new house and hearing the crunch under my feet. I could have hit John then. I wouldn’t have, honestly, and I never told him that’s how I felt, but it was the last straw.
He was lying there with most of the pillow over his head, not getting up, hating the potty little job that was all he’d managed to get. I know he was feeling awful. And I did sympathize. I really did. You couldn’t not if you loved him, and I did. But I wished he’d just pull himself together a bit. I mean, the rest of us had to.
Anyway, the brick. Well, it wasn’t so much the brick as the bits of glass. One of the bigger splinters sliced through my forearm, you know, the one bit of one that stays looking reasonably firm even when the rest begins to go scraggy. It was such a shock. I was still reeling from the noise. You can’t imagine how much noise one of those plate-glass windows makes when it’s broken. And then there was a kind of stinging down my arm; that’s all it seemed to be at the beginning, a sting. And I looked down and there was this great long red line, getting redder and wider all the time. Spreading. It was about six inches long, I think, and the lips of it opened as I looked, like a cut in a bit of steak.