Lonely House Read online

  He takes hold of the cable and pulls. It’s like pulling the sinews out of chicken flesh, he thinks, and then the wire comes away with a satisfying snap and he nearly falls backwards.

  The phone is cut dead but he won’t be needing it anymore. He smiles, and, using another chair-back, pulls himself slowly to his feet.

  The clock clangs the hour as he waits for the head-rush to subside. And then he trudges back towards the garage for another load.

  The gun is knocked from Drover’s hand. He is winded as a weight falls on him, heavy, hard. He rolls; dead leaves and twigs stick to his jacket, dirt on his face, and the weight rolls with him. He sees flashes of tree-masked sky, the ground, dazzles of deep green, trunks massed together, a flabby hand, not his. He smells breath, not his, rank and invasive. He smells another man’s sweat. He feels another man’s fleshy hands grapple with his as he rolls onto his back. Someone got the better of him. His attacker is straddling him now.

  And laughing.

  A deep, honest laugh of innocent fun that Drover knows well. A laugh he can’t resist. The shock, the flash of anger, even the feeling of hunger, seep away into the forest floor as the weight presses down on him and he feels vulnerable and foolish. It’s a rare moment of being out of himself, of not being Drover. Someone got the better of him and he knows exactly who.

  ‘Pete!’ He starts to laugh back as he pushes hard against the man trying to hold him down, and he shouts, ‘You soft bastard, that was our dinner!’

  The struggle turns into a play fight. Two unlikely friends, both now trying to get the better of each other in the afternoon, tree-filtered light of a British autumn.

  It doesn’t last long; neither has the strength, neither has eaten for two days, and neither wants to hurt anyone.

  Or anything.

  Drover gets the better of Pete; or did Pete let him? Either way, Pete gives in and Drover rolls off him. They lie side by side looking up at the white sky through skyscraper-trees that rise up for ever. He can hear Pete chuckling now. He laughs for no reason. It’s just the way he is. Drover likes it. It’s infectious. Or is it contagious? Whatever the long word for it, he catches it. Pete spreads laughter like other people spread colds. Like a baby’s no-reason chuckle bubbling up from a cot, once Pete’s laugh is airborne there is no escaping it. The only antidote is time.

  And hunger. As much as Drover can’t be angry with Pete he was about to make a kill and it would have been their first.

  As if reading his mind, Pete says, ‘You wouldn’t a known how to skin it anyway,’ and laughs some more.

  ‘Not the point,’ Drover protests. ‘I would’ve found a way. Shuck it, Pete, what we going to eat now?’

  ‘It’s not right to kill them,’ Pete says, his laughter subsiding. ‘Not right to kill things, is it, Drover? Dad told me that, and you told me that, didn’t ya?’

  Always serious, always literal, that’s Pete. But it’s true. Drover did tell him that, but they weren’t so hungry then. He didn’t feel so dizzy then. He hadn’t been so dehydrated and desperate then. ‘Then’ had been a long time ago, when they were much younger. Drover had been as innocent then as Pete still was now.

  He doesn’t reply. He just lies there listening to his stomach growling in anger.

  ‘They told me,’ Pete starts saying, and Drover knows what’s coming next, ‘that when my dad…’

  And so he cuts him off with, ‘Not now, Pete, eh? Not now. We need to move on, find food.’

  There’s a moment of no-talk between them as the birds make their voices heard from a safe distance, high up and looking down. Then Pete says, ‘You’re my best friend, aren’t you, Drover?’ And Drover, with a sigh, replies, ‘Yeah, mate, I’m your friend.’

  ‘Best.’

  ‘Best.’

  ‘Only.’

  With another sigh, ‘Only.’

  ‘I love you, Drover.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  And Drover knows he does. In his own child-like, unconditional and simple way, Pete loves his best friend, and, with a quick stab of guilt, Drover remembers why he brought the chubby guy with him.

  William is back in the garage now, the freezer lid open again. He is looking in when his ringtone once more interrupts.

  “Yes, you have a secret you hide.”

  William has never been given to swearing but the persistence of these damn people is really getting to him. It’s made worse by the fact that he knows exactly who is calling and why, and by the fact that they have this same conversation every time they call. But he knows they are not going away.

  “I agree you’ve a darker side.”

  He gives in and fumbles for the green button. With the phone pressed to his ear he carries on decanting the freezer, making room for when the next client comes to call.

  ‘What?’ His voice is as heavy and unwieldy as he is.

  He lifts out another wad of cash, balances it on the side of the freezer and looks around for a bag. There’s an old sack of some sort on a shelf.

  ‘Can’t it wait?’

  He turns, knocking some of the money to the floor, doesn’t see it, and shuffles over to the shelf.

  ‘No. Told you that before. Don’t trust banks.’

  He shuffles back to the freezer, dragging the sack.

  ‘Yes. I know what you want.’

  With his shoulder bent to his ear to support the phone he leans in further.

  ‘I don’t have to let it go.’

  He grabs two wads in one large hand. He lifts the cold money from the depths of the freezer uncovering the death-white face of a severed head.

  It is wrapped in transparent plastic, with ice crystals dusting the corners. The mouth is half open as if the person was half way through a sentence when decapitated. Its open eyes stare lifelessly upwards as William drops the money into the sack.

  ‘Come if you must. The answer’s no.’

  He reaches in for more money, picks up one of the many packs of one hundred pound notes and this time reveals a severed arm, also neatly wrapped.

  ‘Can’t stop you. Don’t care.’

  He drops the freezer lid with a thump. The sound is deadened and swallowed up by the breeze block and concrete of the garage.

  ‘Told you. No.’

  He takes the sack out into the kitchen, switching off the light and closing the door behind him.

  ‘I know it’s today. I’m not ready.’

  The conversation continues as he mounts the stairs.

  ‘No. Will not. They’re all thieves. No one’s getting it.’ And with lots of silence which can only be taken as a no, he plods on until he reaches the bedroom. There he looks around, opens a wardrobe door. No space. Too much money stuffed away in there already.

  He starts to think the man on the phone might actually be right. But he is not giving in.

  ‘Your mother said the same. Wanted it in a bank. Let her put some in and you saw what happened. Killed her.’ Not quite the complete story, but, for William all the salient points are there.

  He looks in drawers. No room. The bedside locker. No room. He looks at his dead wife’s photo beside the double bed.

  ‘Ah!’

  And slings the sack under the bed. That’ll do for now.

  ‘Anyway,’ he says, ‘banks ask questions.’

  That bed looks very inviting. He is tired. He’s not long eaten, he’s full up and it’s been hard work making space in the freezer.

  ‘What time are you getting here, son? She with you? Oh.’

  He might need to make even more space. But first, a rest.

  ‘Going to sleep.’

  He ends the call, puts the phone back in his pocket, checks his watch and sits on the bed. He touches his wife’s black and white nose with a fin
gertip, smiles, and falls back, letting out his breath slowly. He gives a belch.

  ‘’Scuse me. Manners.’

  And closes his eyes.

  Two

  ‘SO’, PETE IS SAYING, walking a few paces behind Drover. ‘So, these two friends, they came to the ghost train. The day weren’t over yet, you see? They hadn’t done all the rides. They’d saved the ghost train for last.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why do you think?’

  Drover considers for a moment. He likes Pete’s stories; they’re always so weird and yet almost believable. Well, not actually believable, maybe, but somehow you would like them to be.

  ‘They saved it to last because…’ Drover begins, knowing Pete would expect a bizarre reason. ‘Because it was the ghost train from hell.’ Not good enough, he knows. Pete is more inventive than that. ‘No, hang on. It was the entrance to hell and whoever went in there would actually go to hell if they went in. That’s why. They’d had a great life together and it was time to end it. So they went to the ghost train so they could see what hell was like.’

  He can tell that Pete has stopped walking so he stops too and turns to him, smiling expectantly. ‘Am I right?’

  Drover sees that Pete is exhausted and pale. When was the last time they had water? Yesterday? Things are starting to look bad.

  ‘You okay, mate?’ he asks, knowing that his friend isn’t.

  ‘I’m here with you,’ Pete says, ‘so, yeah.’ He trots a few paces and catches up with Drover.

  His round face is still alive with a stupid smile. He’s still trying to be strong, still not giving in. He’s following along with dogged determination, but his eyes don’t have the same excited interest as they did a few days ago.

  ‘Sit and rest a bit,’ Drover says. ‘No more stories.’ He sits, rests his back to the smooth bark. Pete sits next to him and they say nothing for a while.

  Drover is thinking back to a few days ago:

  Their most recent squat, the room reeking of the damp mattress, rotting floorboards, and something else dead they never discovered. Empty baked bean tins, a beer bottle with some beer still in it, mould growing on the surface, a bucket under a towel in the far corner. No-one could remember what was in it. No-one wanted to look.

  Pete would sit by the window looking out at the view, except there was no view as there was no window. Just a load of boards nailed across what was once a frame. No view except for whatever he could see through a tiny crack between two pieces of wood. Drover had watched him from the other corner as he had eaten the last of the cornflakes from the box. He had been thinking. It was time to move on again.

  They had to get away from that town like they’d had to leave the one before, like they’d been leaving towns behind for over a year by then. At least, Drover had to, before the past caught up with him and someone traced things back to him. Before someone put two and two together and a light bulb clicked on over someone’s head. Before Pete found out from someone, the papers, the police, that Drover had been involved.

  But the question was, as always, does Pete come too?

  Of course he does. Pete would not survive without Drover. And Drover wouldn’t be able to concentrate on anything else unless Pete was there. But that was always part of the trouble: Pete was a constant reminder, but a reminder that Drover couldn’t live without. He needed to be reminded. He needed to remember every day.

  Of course he remembered every day. How could he not?

  They called it guilt.

  He had felt his stomach knotting up inside as he had watched his slow-witted friend stare through the tiniest of cracks at the window. He thought, what does he see? The street below, people passing by, the cars, the town? Probably not. Knowing Pete and his imagination, he would have seen ghosts and phantoms, mythical beings running up the high street, warlocks flying into the post office and coming out with a new familiar. Healers used the chemist shop, the doctor was an alchemist. The town hall was run by rats and the police station was looked after by a witch that had a pet lizard. That’s kind of how Pete’s mind worked a lot of the time.

  As Drover had sat in the squat, plotting and planning, he had picked his nails with a fork. He had known they had to move on, soon, calmly and without fuss. Without drawing attention. Just disappear. At least no one had known they were there. Well, that wasn’t true. Drover had passed through this town before and some people there had known him, but for the wrong reasons. There would have been his photo in the police station somewhere, in a file, from times before; minor times. A bit of vandalism that had started out as a dare and had ended up as a caution. Would that still have been on record? What about that fight? The one where he started out protecting someone and had ended up on a charge and in court. That would still have been on record.

  But considering all the other things that had gone on in that cul-de-sac of a town, Drover’s file had probably been very thin. And everything in it had been accidental, all of it. Even the last thing. Even that had been an accident. He had reckoned it had been a pretty thick file by then, so it was time to get away.

  But without drawing attention. There had been people who had got to know Pete. That was the problem with someone like him. And no one could have left a town without leaving some kind of hole in it. Not many people had the luxury of being totally invisible, not unless you were a character in one of Pete’s stories. Drover very much doubted that the police station had been looked after by a witch with a pet lizard; there would have been real people there and when they had slipped away perhaps no one would have missed Drover, but someone might have missed Pete.

  Not his father though. Not then.

  Not his one and only, as far as Drover had known, relation. There might have been other family but Pete had never spoken of them. There had once been a mother. Pete had spoken of her and how she had died, and when he had done he had started to cry. That had made Drover hurt, so he had told him not to talk about her. It had been easier that way. There might have been other friends but Drover had never known of them. As far as he had known, Drover had been Pete’s only mate and that had given him one level of responsibility, one weight of ‘must look after him,’ around Drover’s shoulders.

  And then, sitting in that squat, he had known he had had a second one, an even heavier load. It had been a whole rucksack of weighty stones strapped to his back and holding him down. Holding him to Pete.

  They called it guilt.

  Pete had started out as a cause and had soon became someone to have in tow. Like a jester to tell stories and make Drover laugh. But then he had become more than an amusement, he had become trusting. He had become a friend. He had become loyal, and now, through some evolution that had slipped Drover by, he had become Drover’s responsibility. He had put Pete in this position. He had to carry him through.

  He had watched his friend at the boarded up window that day, a thin beam of light across his eyes.

  Drover had wondered what Pete was seeing when he had looked through that opening onto his world down below.

  He had probably been wondering what happened to his dad.

  The pain in his stomach reminds him to keep moving. He knows there’s a long way before the next town. He pulls himself up and reaches down for Pete’s hand.

  ‘Come on, mate, time to press on.’

  ‘Okay,’ Pete says, cheerfully, and gets to his feet. Unsteady.

  ‘We might find a stream,’ Drover says, hopefully.

  ‘You’re right, Drover. We might.’

  They walk on in silence for a few paces until Drover says, ‘So, why did they?’

  ‘Why did they what, Drover?’

  ‘Why did the two friends save the ghost train until last?’

  Pete laughs and kicks some leaves. He touches Drover’s arm. ‘You were nearly right,’ he say
s. ‘Nearly right, but the ghost train isn’t the entrance to hell. It’s the way out of hell. If you go to my funfair you can find the place where all the people who went to hell for the wrong reasons find a way to escape.’

  ‘What?’ Drover laughs at the stupidity of the idea, but the conviction in Pete’s voice is worrying. ‘Went to hell for the wrong reasons? What d’you mean?’

  ‘It’s true,’ Pete says, and you can hear in his voice that he believes it. It’s like he saw it on the TV or something. ‘My funfair has the escape from hell, so everyone who got sent down there ‘cos they did wrong but didn’t really do wrong, they get to find their way out. See?’

  ‘No, actually, mate, I don’t. People who did wrong but didn’t really do wrong?’ There’s something in that strange sentence that starts to worry Drover. ‘Like what, or who?’

  ‘Like innocent people. Mistakes.’

  ‘Ah,’ says Drover, trying to ignore that skin-prickle of realisation that, with the quickening of the heart, heralds the moment you are about to be found out. ‘So, you mean…’ His mouth turns dry as it approaches. That instant when you have a big, horrible secret and only you know it but then suddenly you realise someone else knows and suddenly you’re not safe anymore. ‘People in trouble for something they didn’t do, you mean?’

  ‘Yeah. The real baddies stay in hell.’ Pete works this out as he talks. ‘The real killers and nasty people. They stay down below wandering and always looking but never finding the way out. So when you go on my ghost train you get real scares. I mean real, proper ones. You know, as the dead walk free, the screams and stuff come up from below, the smells and the pain all comes out around the punters and scares the people on the ride. See?’

  Pete laughs some more and Drover forces a chuckle out in support, but really it’s only acting. He feels cold.