Creed (22 page)

Nothing’s going to happen, he reassured himself. You’ll meet the girl, find out a bit more about the necrophilic nut, then renege on the deal, saying you’ll only hand over the film to the man himself. For added incentive, snap off a few frames of Cally so that she’ll also be on record. And if it turns out that the man, himself, is there waiting for collection, well so much the better. Deal with the top dog, that was the thing. Ask him some questions, put it to him straight that he, Creed, knew he was a descendant of Nicholas Mallik no less, wait for a reaction. Then reel off a few more shots before the crazy had a chance to cover his face. When that was done, shift like shit out of there. The guy was over the hill – he’d never catch him. Yeah. Right. Easy.

Creed’s mouth felt very dry.

He got to his feet, did a 365-degree scan, and moved on.

The pond – almost but not quite a lake – looked particularly uninviting when he reached its edge. In the moonlight it appeared more like a great slab of concrete than a refuge for ducks. There wasn’t a ripple on its surface.

His gaze travelled across the still water towards a tall shape on the far side, a light structure that was all but lost in the dark backdrop of trees. That was it, that was the bandstand where he was supposed to meet Cally.

Creed dipped a hand into his pocket and set the switch that would charge the Nikon’s flash. Which way round the pond should he go? Left or right? Or should he just turn round and head back in the direction he’d come from? Might be the sensible thing to do, all things considered. He could always arrange to meet her some place else, somewhere where there were people and lights and sounds. This was too creepy.

Come on, Creed. You’re almost there. You might blow the deal completely if you back off now. She sounded pretty serious on the phone.

‘What the fuck,’ he mumbled to himself as he turned to the left and began the journey around the water’s edge.

The bandstand was set by itself in a clear, grassy area, its tall white posts rising dully from a high black-painted base to support an umbrella-like canopy. Spear railings surrounded the narrow and rather delicate pavilion.

Creed’s approach was not direct: he left the curve of the pond at a tangent, treading a path that was a hundred yards or so away from the bandstand, with the intention of skirting the perimeter to get a good look from all angles. If there was more than one person skulking there, then he wanted to know about it. Unfortunately, because of the high base, it proved difficult to judge; anyone wearing dark clothes would have blended in nicely.

Once on the side that fully caught the moon’s rays, he was able to make out a stairway rising to the rostrum. As far as he could tell, the place was deserted.

Creed walked towards the bandstand with only slightly less trepidation than before. When he was ten or twelve feet away he stopped. He held his breath. He listened.

He heard the creaking of a floorboard.

Creed took one involuntary step backwards, then checked himself. His eyes narrowed as he peered into the darkness beyond the iron railings.

‘Cally.’ He cleared his throat, embarrassed by the shake in his voice.

He heard more movement.

‘Cally, it’s Joe Creed.’ He added, somewhat unnecessarily: ‘I’m here.’

Something caught his eye. Something up there on the bandstand.

That’s not possible, he thought. He’d checked it out as he’d walked round. The rostrum had been empty, he was sure.

A figure moved forward from the shadow cast by the canopy. It was him, the person Creed had photographed in the cemetery. He was wearing the same long raincoat and the same scarf masked the lower half of his face. Creed was certain it was him.

The man stood there quietly looking down at the photographer.

‘Cold night,’ Creed said by way of conversation. Cold as the grave, he thought.

The figure didn’t move.

‘We should talk, right?’ Creed leaned forward a little, whether to encourage a response or to get a better look, he wasn’t sure himself. He cleared his throat again. ‘Seems I’ve got something you want.’

Instead of replying, the figure moved to the top of the stairway and began to descend. Creed resisted the urge to back off more. He wasn’t going to show this fruitcake he was nervous. No way.

‘Maybe you oughta stay where you are,’ he suggested.

The man ignored the suggestion. He reached the bottom step and stood behind the gate in the railing, his eyes on Creed all the time. He swung the gate open, slowly.

‘I’m glad you’re here,’ he said, advancing no further.

Creed shivered. He couldn’t help it. The man’s voice was gravelly and tight, as if squeezed from the larynx. He either had a bad cold or a disease of the throat. But it wasn’t just the sound of the voice that caused his anxiety – there was something more, something he couldn’t define. Some people exuded vitality when they spoke; this one exuded whatever the opposite was. A doctor informing you that you had cancer might induce the same reaction. Creed felt suddenly nauseous.

‘Where . . .’ he said, as if to assert himself ‘. . . where’s the girl? Where’s Cally?’

The man lowered his scarf, tucking it below his chin, causing Creed to flinch at the sight of the ravaged face now caught in the shine of the moon. Even though he’d become used to studying those same features on film over the past couple of days, they still came as a shock in the flesh. Strange how the soft light emphasized each corrugation, presenting the deep-etched lines so definitely they could have been rubbed in with soot; the moonlight, like the poor Xerox copies, should have washed his face to blandness.

That awful, dread-making voice again. ‘She isn’t necessary, Mr Creed. I’m the one you have to deal with.’

It sounded so ominous, the way he said it, and Creed began to wonder if he really had made a mistake in coming. Maybe he should have turned the whole thing over to his editor and let the
Dispatch
get on with the story – if there really
was
a story. A good idea might be to take the money and run, give the creep what he wanted and forget about the Journalist of the Year Award, which wasn’t his line anyway, he was a snapper, for Chrissake, not a journo . . .

Creed became aware that he was mentally gibbering and, with an effort of will, desisted. ‘Look,’ he ventured, ‘I don’t know who you are, but could be I’ve made—’ He was going to say, ‘made a mistake’, but the other man interrupted.

‘Give me the film.’ It was a command that brooked no dissension.

‘
I haven’t got it with me.
’ Creed’s response was rapid, blurted out with no thought behind it. He stood there like a weak-kneed schoolboy who’d impulsively confessed to stealing the headmaster’s wallet. He felt badly in need of a lie-down.

The man was silent again. Was there rage building up inside him, was he disappointed in what he’d just heard? Creed couldn’t tell.

‘You’re a very foolish man,’ the tortured voice announced.

But this time – and the photographer couldn’t understand why – the words had less effect. Perhaps it was the weariness in them that weakened their impact, their power. This guy was
antiquated
, Creed told himself, a little of his usual belligerence slowly – very slowly, it must be admitted – beginning to crawl to the surface. What was he worried about? An old wrinkly who didn’t look strong enough to spit against the wind? He looked scary enough – he
sounded
scary enough – but think about it logically: What could he actually
do
? Nothing, that was what. Creed’s smile was forced, but he hoped the old boy could see it.

‘Yeah,’ he admitted, ‘I’m very foolish. But then, you’re not so smart yourself. You know, there’s a law against the kind of thing you were doing at Lily Neverless’ funeral.’

Creed became even more emboldened (although not as much as he pretended) when he saw the dark-coated figure grip a railing to steady himself. Somewhere outside the park a motorist tooted his horn, the anger muted by distance.

‘And listen,’ Creed continued, ‘I don’t appreciate anyone breaking into my home. D’you really think that freak you sent frightened me? Christ, I’ve seen worse in the mirror after a heavy night. Just who the fuck are you anyway?’ He was beginning to work up a steam. ‘The son of Nicholas Mallik, is that who you are? Oh yeah, I know all about him. Ashamed of your old man, want the whole gruesome mess to rest in peace? You shouldn’t have done nasty things at Lily’s funeral, if that’s the case. So let’s have some answers, and then we’ll consider where we go from there. You understand me?’

A bravura performance, you might say, even though he did get just a little carried away.

‘I said, do you understand me?’ Creed repeated, impressed by his own impudence.

If he did understand him, the raincoat man wasn’t saying. Instead he stepped to one side of the gate, then turned to something behind him.

The blackness of the bandstand’s base was not as total as Creed had first thought, for now there was an even greater darkness spreading within it. He stared in dismay, then realised that what he was actually witnessing was the opening of a door; the bandstand itself was obviously built over a chamber of some kind, probably where odd bits of equipment and park deckchairs were stored. The deeper black grew no more.

The bald dome of a head emerged first, cast by the moonlight as dull ivory. Creed remembered the intruder in his house had been stoop-backed. The freak came out from the shelter and now its hands, with their extraordinary long fingers and nails, were visible; white and skeletal, they were nasty-looking things. Its huge eyes were almost luminous, as though moonrays reflected on something behind them, giving off an inner gleam; their pupils were like jet-black dots. Its mouth opened and the two long, jagged teeth that touched its lower lip did nothing to enhance the grin.

As it came out into the open, its thin limbs like sticks, their movement brittle yet weaving, Creed could not help thinking of a giant spider emerging from its hole. The analogy was hardly calming.

‘
Ohfuckinhell
,’ said Creed in a hushed voice.

The ‘thing’ loitered in the gateway.

‘You really are an extremely loathsome person,’ the man from the cemetery told Creed, and this time his words had a wintry sharpness to them, all weariness apparently shed.

The photographer was lost for riposte, obvious though it should have been; instead he turned to run. At least his mind did. In fact, his mind had already scooted down the Broad Walk and was clambering over the railings at the end, whereas his body had remained rooted to the spot. With some effort he looked down at his feet as if to reprimand them. They refused to take notice. His attention shot back to the two figures by the bandstand.

‘Let’s negotiate,’ he suggested, and wondered if they’d understood him. The words had sounded garbled even to him. ‘I can easily get the film and the prints for you, it’d be no problem at all.’

A tickling around his ankle caused him to glance down again.

At first he could see nothing amiss, but as something tightened over his foot, he bent slowly to take a closer look. Something else snaked around his other ankle and he examined that one, too.

He murmured something too agonised to be understood.

Where he stood the grass was growing at an amazing rate; it slipped over his shoes and up into his trousers. He could feel the tendrils curling around his legs. Creed stepped back in fright – or tried to.

The grass blades tore, but their initial resistance sent him stumbling backwards. He fell, landing heavily on his butt, then flattening out on to his back. He pushed himself up almost immediately and as he sat there, stunned by the impossibility of his fall rather than the fall itself, the grass began to weave through his outstretched fingers.

His cry was less contained this time. He tugged his hands free and scrambled to his knees; but even then he could feel the long tendrils of grass wrapping themselves around his calves. Creed jumped to his feet, snapping the blades as he did so, then hopped a peculiar kind of dance in the moonlight, afraid that if he stood still too long he would be (literally this time) rooted to the spot. That frantic jig at least had one positive effect: it released him from the fear that had gripped him so tightly.

The stooped, bald-domed figure was making its way towards him again, one hand outstretched, a long bony finger pointed at Creed as if singling him out in a crowd. The ‘thing’ still hadn’t spoken, nor made a sound of any kind.

The stench of its breath reached Creed well before the emaciated creature itself did, and it was foul, the odour of sewers filled with excrement and dead things, enough in itself to overwhelm the most stalwart of us.

‘Keep away from me, you fucker,’ our hero warned, raising a fist above his right shoulder and taking the stance – and resisting the urge to retch.

That almost fleshless digit, with its gnarled and twisted fingernail, stretched even further forward and sank into the material of Creed’s buttoned coat.
Literally
sank in, raising steam as it went. Creed screeched when he felt it piercing his chest.

He found himself running, the moment of deciding to pull himself free of that impaling finger and run like buggery completely lost to his thoughts because it was never registered as a conscious decision in the first place. There was no pain, although he clutched at the hole in his chest to stem the blood that must surely flow, and the speed of his flight was something to behold despite the clumsiness of his stride.