Flesh and Blood (10 page)

Whatever embarrassment I felt suddenly melted as Emma slid across and nestled up to me. She rested her cheek on my shoulder, and her leg was pressed against mine. My head turned, and I was looking directly into her large, everlasting eyes.

“Shall we have another dance in a minute?” she whispered.

“OK,” I said.

Her blood-red lips parted slowly. I felt an unbidden urge to kiss her. Even then, when I already had suspicions, her pull was almost irresistible.

“Do you think vampires and zombies get on well?” she whispered. “Do you think they ever have an undead romance?”

I smiled. “I expect your average zombie would just try to eat a vampire. And I shouldn’t think zombie blood tastes very nice.”

Her fake fangs glittered as the music swayed. “I’ll take the risk,” she muttered.

A loud group belly laugh burst out close by. I snapped my gaze aside to see Chief Inspector Leonard Greenhill’s group of cops guffawing amongst themselves.

I saw one of them pull a handkerchief from his pocket. He snatched at his nose, wiping away the thin, yellowish trail that had been there.

My heart froze. So it wasn’t only the people in Priory Mews. There were others. Was this man a patient of Caroline Greenhill, too? Of course he was, he had to be.

The next thing I knew, I could see Emma walking away, my sight of her quickly blocked by dancers. I dumbly glanced at the empty space beside me, as if I expected to see her in two places at once.

I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment. I hoped she hadn’t thought my switch of attention was deliberate; that I was snubbing her. With a sigh, I finished my orange juice. There was almost half of it left. My hand had warmed it up in the glass and it tasted peculiar.

I was getting weary of the crowd, and the tempo of the music. I watched the forest of bodies shifting
around the floor. I wondered how much accumulated wealth this gathering represented.

I saw Mum and Dad jigging about and the anger I’d felt earlier flooded back. It was as if these people could smell poverty on us. I felt like a trained monkey, being exhibited for their amusement.

I don’t know how much time passed but finally Byron and Caroline Greenhill were beside the doors, next to a large table that had been set up, filled with sparkly gold gift bags. Gradually the guests decided it was time to make a move, told casual acquaintances how lovely it’d been to catch up, said we mustn’t leave it so long next time.

Byron and Caroline handed out gift bags. Pecks on the cheek, firm shakes of the hand. Nobody had the vulgarity to look inside the bags. See you next week, see you at work, see you at the club, see you when I get back.

The cold seemed to seep into the room like a grey, creeping mist. Tendrils slithered across the floor. I could almost hear it.

I
could
hear it. A slow, rasping wheeze, like the dying exhalation of a gigantic reptile. I looked around, but it seemed to be coming from everywhere
at once. I stood up, and walked over to where Mum and Dad were talking with the Giffords.

“Are you ready to go, Sam?” chirped Mum. Her voice was slightly louder than all those around her. “Hasn’t it been a lovely party?”

“Lovely,” smiled Mrs Gifford. She tapped at the top button of her dress.

“Aren’t you going to say goodbye to Emma?” said Mum.

“Umm…”

I couldn’t see her anywhere.

Dad slapped me on the back. “Time to hit the road, sonny jim.”

Then we were at the doors. “Great party, man,” Dad said to Byron.

Byron grinned at him indulgently. Mum hovered, glancing towards the table of goodie bags. Caroline picked through the ones that remained.

“Ah, Mr and Mrs Gifford,” she said, lifting a couple of them clear, “do please accept these, just a small token of friendship for our neighbours… Not at all… Now, then … Ellen and Richard and Sam… Here we are. Happy Halloween, all.”

“Thank you so much,” said Mum, peeking into
her bag. “It’s been a wonderful evening.”

Caroline beamed warmly at her. “Yes. Yes, it has.”

“Goodnight,” said Byron, with a nod.

“Nighty night,” said Mum.

Then we were crunching along the driveway of Bierce Priory. The light from the annexe spilled out into the night, casting our shadows into grotesque shapes in front of us.

I could hear it again!

Slithering. Movement in the bushes. A regular, pulsing hiss of weight against fallen leaves.

“What’s that?”

“What’s what, Sam?” said Dad.

“Aren’t the Greenhills lovely people?” said Mum.

“Salt of the earth,” said Mr Gifford, arm in arm with his wife.

“It’s nice to see people in, y’know, a privileged position giving something back,” said Dad. “To the community.”

“They’ve been very generous to our church’s restoration fund,” said Mrs Gifford.

“Shh!” I hissed. “Can’t you hear it?”

Dad made an exaggerated hand-to-ear listening pose. “Nope.”

I kept looking over my shoulder. There was nobody there. Nobody, nothing, just the Priory.

Yet, it was creeping up on us. It was hidden away, it was sneaking through the undergrowth, crawling under the gravel. Watching us, stalking us, licking its fangs!

I could hear it. Closer, closer. Its thin lips dripping.

“What
is
that? Listen! Listen!”

“That Caroline is a terrific woman,” mumbled Dad.

We walked out into the road. Most of the cars were gone. One of the Hyundais was still parked on our grass.

The grass. Safe. It wouldn’t come out on to the grass, not where we could see it. It had to stay back, in the shadows.

I would stay on the grass. The grass that was growing. Up, around, over, always growing, growing, growing. Through cracks in the pavement. All over. Growing into the air, the ground, the buildings, out of the mouths of the people.

I shook my head. Thoughts seemed to cram and jumble around my mind, a senseless mess. I felt strange, disconnected.

“Are you all right, Sam?”

“Yes, I’m fine.”

Inside the house. Home. Mum and Dad went to put the kettle on.

I felt shaky and vacant, as if bits and pieces of me were falling away. Nothing quite seemed to fit. I tried to hold things in my head, one after the other, but they dissolved, like sand running through my fingers.

Suddenly, without any kind of warning, I was furious.

This wasn’t right. Something was happening to me. No, something had been done to me. It was them.

I marched into the kitchen. I heard words come out of me, but couldn’t connect them with anything in my brain. “How can you not see what’s going on? The Greenhills, they’re
evil
!”

Dad narrowed his eyes at me. “Have you been at the wine gums?”

“Sam?” said Mum.

“I thought Emma looked a little worse for wear,” chuckled Dad. “Were you both on the vino?”

“
No!
” I shouted. The sound bounced off the walls. They both flinched.

“I think you’d better get to bed,” said Mum quietly.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But can’t you see? They’ve … to me…” What? Done what?

Nothing made… What?

I was at the foot of the stairs. I was halfway up the stairs. I was in my room.

It seemed peaceful. Warm and quiet. The only light was the faint glow of the moon. I went into my bathroom, then got undressed and got into bed.

I was safe here, in my bed, under the covers. They wouldn’t get me here, nothing could get me tucked up in my own little bed. No, not here, not here, not here.

Then suddenly something snapped at me! Out of the darkness! Up from under the covers. The thing from outside. Red eyes, and sharp teeth, clambering up me, clacking its jaws, dribbling. Its claws dug into me, sharp, climbing up towards my head.

I screamed, and it was gone.

But my scream woke the bugs. Millions, billions, legs and antennae. Scuttering and scuttling. Squeezing up through the floorboards, millions, billions, trillions. Buzzing and chittering, spreading
out like a crawling carpet, gushing, flooding, bursting, filling the house, filling the bath, filling my room. Deeper and deeper, a sea of oozing thoraxes and abdomens.

I couldn’t move. The insects scrambled over my bed, between the sheets, through my pillow. They bit me, smothering me from hair to toenails. They burrowed and dug, eating, eating, eating, sliding beneath my skin.

I was eaten away. And the bugs ate themselves. And there was nothing.

I stared up at the ceiling, wild-eyed. Silent. Still.

Many, many minutes. Still. Silent.

The white ceiling was a dark grey, with a lighter set of rectangles to one side where the moon shone through the window. For a while, there was peace again.

Gradually, the lighter rectangles of light moved. They distorted. They stretched. And then they retreated, returning to their original shape.

But it wasn’t the light that was moving. It was the ceiling. The ceiling was breathing. Slowly, in and out, gently up and down, regular and steady, right above my head.

A dark spot appeared, directly in my line of sight. A flake of plaster spiralled down and landed on the bedclothes, beside my face. The spot grew, wider and longer. There was a slight tearing sound, like someone slowly ripping a sheet of paper in two.

The plaster of the ceiling peeled back. It blossomed and curled, like a speeded-up film of a flower opening. The spot became a hole, the hole widened into a gap. Behind it, nothing but an inky, light-swallowing blackness.

Out of the blackness flowered a mass, a seething, spotted growth of animal tissue, diseased and eaten, rotting away, spreading out across the ceiling. The remnants of me, of the insects.

Down through the mass heaved a lump. A shape, pushing through the twisting, peeling skin of it. The mass suddenly split. Blood and pus leaked sideways along the rip.

Then a face emerged, streaked with blood. Emma’s. Her eyes red, her lips smiling.

The face grew, bloated, expanded. She opened her mouth. It became a chasm, stretching out and back, folding her head away, revealing a huge, glistening hand beneath.

The hand folded, in order to fit its stick-like fingers through the encrusted, peeled opening in the ceiling. Each finger ended in a jagged, pointed claw. The fingers spread as the hand descended. Between the bony fingers, in the palm of the hand, grew something dark and wriggling. Slimy, beating cilia fluttering from the growth’s wrinkled, collapsed surface.

The hand reached closer, down, down. Around it floated a yellowing mist. It groped for my face, its fingers stretching, claws slicing the air. Like a giant spider, legs folding and flexing. Reaching for my face, to dig into it, to cut it, to tear it off, to pop out my eyeballs, to pull away my skin and muscles and sinews, to leave my skull howling in the night.

A scream dried raw in my throat.

Not real, not real, not real
, I said to myself over, and over, and over, and over.

My reeling mind struggled to steady itself.

They’d drugged me. I couldn’t even form the concept in my head at that moment, but some tiny part of myself said that they had drugged me.

Emma
had drugged me, when she got close. It had all been an act. The words, the lips. She’d put something in my glass.
Emma
had drugged me.

For hours, the horrible visions persisted. One folded into another, sending horrible creatures running for me, leaping at me. I kept shutting my eyes, but the things would crawl beneath my eyelids. I could feel sticky breath against my neck, forked tongues licking at my chin.

I lay as still as I could. I tried to concentrate on what I could see through my window, or across my room, until they too warped into hideous pulsing blossoms. Filth! Infection!

Terrified to cry out, or get up, I waited for the nightmare to end. Just a nightmare, I chanted to myself. They caused it. Emma caused it. It’s just a nightmare, with a cause, and an effect, and it will end. It will end.

I had no sense of time. When the first glints of daylight showed at my window, I was as surprised as if they’d been there when I got home.

It was close to half past ten that morning, Sunday, before I sat up in bed, trembling and weak. My head ached. Shadows still scuttled through my mind, but somehow I could get a better grip of it now. I believed myself, when I said it wasn’t real.

After another hour or so, I was sure that the worst had passed. Whatever they’d dosed me with, its effects were subsiding. I swung my legs out and sat on the edge of the bed, cradling my splitting head in my hands. I fought back a wave of tears.

I’d wanted to give Emma the benefit of the doubt. Until I was sitting there, on the side of the bed, I’d wanted to believe that, somehow, Emma was on the periphery of whatever the Greenhills were doing.

No more. She wasn’t reluctantly hiding a family evil, or acting under duress, or the one innocent person caught up in a terrible secret. The tipsiness was all a fake, presumably. She’d drugged me like an expert, efficiently and with a smile, distracting me with her eyes and her touch.

Whatever uncertain feelings I’d had for her were gone now. They were turned to stone.

But why had she done it?

The answer was as blindingly obvious as my
headache. The Greenhills wanted to warn me off. They wanted to deliver a clear message to me: keep out of our business. We can deal with you at any time we like. You are marked. Keep quiet, shut up, or suffer the consequences.

I felt a nauseating mixture of terror and thrill. Terror at their threat, and at knowing they were on to me. Oddly thrilled at the prospect that I’d been right. There was something evil about them. There was no question about it now.

If they’d planned to drug me, why not give me whatever they gave to Mum and Dad, and the others – something pacifying? I reasoned that their ‘medication’ for the others must be something that you had to keep taking, that had to build up and be maintained over time, hence those regular so-called check-ups. One shot of it wouldn’t have had enough effect on my system. They needed to frighten me, badly enough to stop me in my tracks.

They must have been on the alert ever since that night when I saw the dog and the face at the window. They had brand-new neighbours that night, undrugged neighbours, and when that scream rang out they must have known there was a chance
we’d heard it. That was why Caroline had turned up on our doorstep next morning. To check. And I had told them,
myself
, that I’d heard something!

It slowly dawned on me that I’d been wrong about one thing: somehow, they must have known about my visit to Jo’s dad at the
Courier
. They wouldn’t have drugged me like that if they’d only suspected I
might
cause a problem, if they were only keeping tabs on me. They knew I’d been investigating them: they really did see me as a threat, and not merely a
potential
troublemaker. The only thing that could have led them to believe that was my meeting in town.

Summoning up what was left of my strength, I showered, dressed and called Jo.

The minute she came to the phone, I could tell from her voice that something was up. “Are you OK?” I said.

“We’ve just got back from the hospital.”

“What? Why?”

“My dad had a heart attack yesterday. He’s OK, he’s out of danger and everything, but my mum and me are still a bit … shaky, y’know?”

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “He’s going to be all right, though?”

“Yes, they said it could have been a lot worse, but he’s got wires all over him and they’re going to keep him in for a few days.”

“How are you?”

“Well, a bundle of nerves, but better than yesterday.”

“That’s awful. He seemed fine last week.”

“Oh, Mum’s been telling him to lose weight for years. She’s been nagging him that he’s one pork pie away from a stroke, and she was right. Stupid sod. He’s going to be on nothing but salad when he gets home. Before I forget, he had a message for you.”

“What? For me?”

“Yes,” said Jo. “I was going to tell you at school tomorrow, but… Anyway, he said to tell you that from your conversation with him last week, scenario one now looks the most reasonable. I don’t know what he’s on about.”

I frowned. “Er, yes, I know what he means.”

“You sound a bit shaky yourself?”

I paused. “No, no, I’m fine. Just shocking news, you know.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“See you.”

I sat in silence for a minute or two. Conflicting emotions went to war inside me.

I had been drugged, Jo’s dad was in the hospital. His message indicated that he now believed my suspicions about the Greenhills were correct. Which implied that his heart attack was as much their fault as my doping. How, I couldn’t begin to guess.

I felt cold and frightened. Just how far did their network extend? Just how powerful were they?

Once again, I was plagued with thoughts of giving up. It would have been so much easier to toe the line.

But I’ve never responded to threats. Or to bullies. That chip on my shoulder kept me defiant.

I went downstairs, leaning against the bannisters. I was still slightly unsteady on my feet.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” said Dad. He was stretched out on the sofa, sections of the Sunday newspaper spread out around him on the floor.

“You look white as a sheet,” tutted Mum. “Were you drinking last night?”

“No.”

“It’s OK, you can tell us, we won’t be cross. It’s covering it up that’d make me cross.”

“Mum, I had one glass of orange juice. I swear.”

“Then why are you so pale?” she said softly, holding the sides of my face in her hands.

I nearly blubbed again. “I didn’t sleep much. I’ve got a headache, that’s all.”

She smoothed a hand across my hair, the way she used to when I was little, and off school with a bug. She smiled at me and kissed my forehead. I couldn’t remember the last time she’d been that way with me. But there it was again, now that she was doped up to the eyeballs.

I felt lousy for most of the rest of the day. All I did was slump in front of the telly, stewing in my own worries and ignoring the homework I needed to finish. I went to bed early, more tired than I could ever remember being, and slept like a log. Like the dead.

The following morning, Monday, I overslept and was almost late again. At least school was only a few hundred metres from my front door. I’d perfected the art of going from bed to classroom in fourteen minutes flat.

I saw Jo in the corridors and gave her a hug. Liam hadn’t heard about the heart attack, so he gave her
an even bigger hug. She told us she was fine. She’d popped in to see her dad on the way to school, and he’d seemed a lot brighter.

In the pre-bell rush, there wasn’t time to tell them about Saturday. When they asked what the Greenhills’ Halloween Ball was like, all I said was, “OK. Long story.”

I saw Emma, too, from a distance. Here she was, carrying on as normal – totally as normal. As if nothing had happened. She was so much her usual self that I started to doubt my own sanity, asking myself for a split second if I’d got it wrong.
But then
, I thought,
she’s probably expecting me to be cowering and silent now, to be wary of her, and afraid.

Purely by chance, our paths crossed at lunchtime. Emma was heading for a table, just as I was leaving. When she caught sight of me, she smiled, then blushed and glanced down.

“Hi, Sam,”

“Hello,” I said politely.

“I really have to apologize,” she said, biting the side of her bottom lip. “I, er, had a bit too much of that red wine on Saturday night. I, er, might have given you the wrong impression. I’m really sorry.”

She glowed with sincerity and warmth. She expected her radiance and good looks to enslave me, even today, even after what she’d done!

Fury clouded my judgement. That chip on my shoulder.

Say it! Say it!

“I know what you did,” I said, my voice trembling only slightly.

She smiled her perfect, beautiful smile. She placed a hand on my shoulder and leaned against me on tiptoe, her lips a millimetre from my ear. She spoke in a delicate whisper. “So be a good boy, and do as you’re told.”

Her words chilled my blood. She stood back, her smile still in place. In her eyes – those eyes – was a glint of sharpened steel.

I’m sure my face betrayed my horror. I hoped she’d interpret it as compliance.

“I-I will,” I lied.

She winked at me, and went on her way.

As we left school at the end of the day, I finally brought Liam and Jo up to date on everything that
had been happening. All I left out was the meaning of Jo’s dad’s message to me. I didn’t want her to be even more upset about his condition.

Liam was still sceptical. “This is conspiracy theory stuff,” he said. “Although, I have to admit, having coded locks and security doors inside
is
pretty odd. Jo’s dad is right, you need proper evidence.”

“Emma bloody well drugged him!” hissed Jo.

“He thinks. He didn’t see it happen,” said Liam.

“Oh, so, where did the hallucinations come from?”

“I’m not saying she didn’t,” said Liam. “I’m saying you need actual, physical, in-your-hand evidence.”

“And I intend to get it,” I said.

“How?” said Liam.

“As far as I can see, there’s only one option left,” I said. “None of the Greenhills are ever likely to let direct evidence get out into the open. Agreed? They’re far too clever for that.”

“Yes,” said Liam.

“Which includes Emma’s mum not leaving supplies of suspect drugs at her surgery, her dad not carrying anything suspicious on trips, all that sort of thing. Agreed?”

“Probably, yes,” said Liam.

“And we know they keep the house locked up tight. So if there’s evidence to be found, that’s where it’ll be. That’s where we’ve got to look. I have to get into Bierce Priory.”

They both stared at me for a moment.

“You mean break in?” said Liam.

“Well, I don’t mean knock on the front door and ask to root through their wardrobes!”

“That
is
a crime,” said Jo. “You
are
aware of that.”

“Give me an alternative,” I said, throwing my arms wide.

“Tell the cops?” said Jo.

“With Leonard Greenhill in charge of every police officer for miles?” I said.

“Tell school?” said Liam. “Ah, no, stupid idea, I can answer my own question there.”

“School procedures would send the Head straight to the cops
and
Emma’s parents,” said Jo. “Sam would be totally sunk.”

“Yeah, I realized as soon as I said it,” said Liam, holding his hands up.

Terrifying thoughts about what I might find inside the Priory flashed through my mind. “I just can’t see another way,” I said.

I got a call at about seven that evening from Jo’s dad, Martin. He’d been discharged from the hospital that afternoon, and had arrived home shortly after Jo got back from school.

“Hi! Are you OK?” I said.

“Fighting fit,” he said. He lowered his voice a little. “Although I’ve only been home two hours and already I’ve had a bar of chocolate snatched out of my hand. Anyway, look, I’m calling to tell you two things. One, you were right.”

“I heard.”

“You know why? On Saturday, we had a visitor at work. Byron Greenhill. There were about half a dozen of us in the office. He turned up carrying cappuccinos from the coffee shop downstairs.”