Rottenhouse (36 page)

‘
That’ll do.’ Simon
closed the gun, stood, and readied himself by taking in a deep
breath and stretching out his neck and shoulders in long arching
movements. As he was about to walk up to the main door he froze.
The sun was giving out its last bursts of light before it finally
set and the sky had turned almost black. Inside the house would be
blacker and he couldn’t risk turning on the lights. He would go
around the back. Confront the O’Hagan’s face to face.

And that’s what Simon did. He walked
around the side of the house, not on the walkway but just below,
just in case there were peepers in the windows. Around the back of
the house the hill sloped down steeply but there was enough of the
plateau here so that a small vegetable garden could be kept as well
as a shed. The back of the house was as bad as the front and the
smell and the heat seemed to settle here and not be taken away by
the soft summer breeze.

Everything in Simon’s body told him to
run when he saw in the garden, surrounded by the guts and entrails
of a recently slaughtered pig, the mother and the largest of the
three brothers. The brother wore the same garb as his father only
he filled it out. Earlier the brother had looked big and Simon had
been some distance away, now closer, he was a giant. He had a head
the size of a pumpkin and a jaw that could crush rocks. On his head
the cap was perched awkwardly and he kept on pulling it down as he
went about his gruesome business. He was using the biggest cleaver
Simon had ever seen and beside him was the mother and as big as he
was she was just small. A tiny woman in a filthy yellow plaid dress
which was covered in dirt and blood. She had small features and
beady eyes and mousy brown hair that was matted. There was no
beauty there and probably never had been.

Big brother and small mother continued
on chopping and cleaving and heaving as Simon stepped out from
behind the rusted carcass of an old Ford Anglia. He had the gun
pointed at them and his shadow, with the sun behind him, stretched
out far enough so that what was left of the pig was covered in it,
as too was the small mother.

‘
Nobody move.’ Simon
said, though to him it seemed not the right thing to say. Neither
of them listened though, and big brother brought the cleaver down
with a mighty chumpf and little mother turned to see what the fuss
about.

‘
Who’s that?’ Little
mother said. Her voice was barely a whisper. ‘Who thefuck are
you?’

‘
I said nobody move.’
Simon took a step forward and unknowingly crushed some potato
plants beneath him. Big brother looked up which seemed to take some
effort.

‘
He’s gone and stamped
on daddy’s spuds, mother.’ Big brother said. His voice was huge,
thick like mayonnaise, and Simon could tell this chap had never
been to a college. Probably never set foot in a school his entire
life.

‘
He’s holding Luds gun
too.’ Mother said, and then she pointed to the house behind her
with a gnarled thumb, ‘Go get daddy, he’s gonna want to see
this.’

Big brother took off his baseball cap
and threw it to the floor. He kept hold of the cleaver, gripped it
tighter as he looked at Simon, then the gun, then back at Simon and
then to the axe he held which was still dripping with blood. He
coughed up a mean wad of phlegm and spat it out. A bit of it clung
to his dry lip and it dripped down like dirty egg white onto his
tatty vest.

‘
Daddy’s dead.’ Big
brother said and Simon could see that even though the lights were
on but nobody was home up in that big old head of his he still had
a brain and that brain was all instinct and not marred by the
modern world in which Simon lives in.

Mother narrowed her eyes and then put
her hands on her small hips. Her skin was crumpled up like rolled
wool. ‘Nah. This little chap didn’t do with Lud. Gun aint been
fired, would have heard it. And as fer that bleeding axe, could be
pig’s blood is all. Nah, he aint done with Lud.’

Simon raised the axe and now both
weapons were trained on the pair. ‘Guess again, woman. Now I asked
Lud to give me Lucy back and he refused, so I am here asking you
the same thing; give me back Lucy or I’ll kill you just like I
killed your daddy.’

‘
Is he right,
son?’

Big brother wiped his nose with his
bare arm and then looked up to the sky. He sniffed the air like a
dog trying to find a scent. His head moved from left to right then
right to left and then it arched so far back he thought the big guy
was going to fall over onto his arse. With a quick snap he returned
his gaze to Simon, but now his eyes were wide and he raised the
cleaver so that the pointy end was aimed directly at the man with
the gun.

‘
Father’s dead,
mother. I can smell his blood. He’s over by the bridge and this
streak a piss must’ve cut him deep coz there’s alota
blood.’

A few things happened very quickly
then. The mother screamed such a deep scream that it defied
everything about her size and birds flew up from trees and the
scream drowned out the rushing river. She ran at Simon all hands
reaching out like talons and her eyes wide with hate and anger and
revenge. She reached Simon quicker than he had anticipated and he
didn’t have time to fire the gun or to raise his axe and all he
could do was swing the shotgun in a short arc, move his body back a
step and then let the little woman run face first into the butt of
the gun as he brought it down and when he brought it down there was
a crunch of bone and a tear of skin and a shriek of pain and the
old woman fell to the floor and didn’t move. Blood poured from the
open wound below the woman’s left eye and the cut was deep enough
so that Simon could see bone poking through. Just when Simon
thought that the old woman had either died or was out cold she
began to fit and her body contorted in odd angles and she foamed
from her mouth and nose. A few seconds of that were followed by a
deep groan coming from her belly right up through her chest and out
her mouth and then she was dead and she lay in a pool of blood,
spit and vomit.

‘
Imagonnakillyou!’ Big
brother charged in and Simon felt pity for the dumb brute. The big
guy had instincts, could tell that his own father had been murdered
and where the body was, and he could also snap Simon into two
pieces with his shovel like hands of his and muscles the size of
mountains, but all that pure strength and anger was directed at
simply charging at Simon much like his father, and then his mother
had done, and they were both dead. Simon knew he had been lucky
with the father and had relied on his own quick instincts and
perhaps a bit more luck to kill the mother but he had time with the
big one and used the time to raise the shotgun, wait till he was
about 5 feet away and then pulled the trigger.

The boom from the shotgun wasn’t as
loud as Simon had anticipated but the low noise didn’t diminish the
impact the released shell had on the chest of the big bastard
running at him. The pellets tore through the blue overalls and the
white vest and the skin and the bone and then all the little
pellets ripped the insides out of big brother straight out his back
leaving a hole the size of a football right in the middle of the
big man’s body. Big brother stopped dead in his tracks, literally,
and opened his mouth as if to say something but there was nothing
to say because he was dead, he just didn’t know it yet. The body
swayed back and forward as if it were a little leaf on a rose bush
and then blood came out if his mouth, his eyes and his ears and out
of the hole where little bits of innards hung like a busted piñata.
He fell to the floor with a thud, an arm outstretched as if he were
trying to reach his mother but couldn’t make it. And that was that.
Another two people dead by Simons hand though at this point he
wasn’t really thinking about that or the consequences. Those
thoughts were being pushed to the back of his mind by the
adrenaline, by the need to find Lucy, and the natural instinct we
all have to survive.

3

Then there was only the sound of the
pigs munching and the river flowing. Night time was creeping in and
the forest animals were falling quiet. It was the lull before the
nocturnal creatures went about their business. It was dark enough
now that Simon couldn’t see through the trees and it was a sea of
black nothing. Soon, without a moon and no overhead lamps, he would
be surrounded by the blackness.

Simon, for reasons
unknown to him, searched the body of big brother and found nothing
but a wet hanky, what looked like a rabbits foot tied to a piece of
string
,
a lock of
ginger hair and a lighter, which he took and placed in his back
pocket.

There was another low moan. It came
from the house, from behind one of the bare dirty windows. Whoever
was up there hadn’t heard, or had heard and ignored the gunshot and
now that it was darker Simon could make out a yellowish light
coming from one of the upstairs windows. A soft breeze whipped
around him and he could smell fresh pine and water. In other times,
and with a lick of paint and a few fixes, this place would be a
lovey place to live.

But now wasn’t the time to think about
such things. He went into the house not caring how much noise he
made.

4

The guts of the house were ruined.
Walls knocked down, bare wet walls, hanging electrical cables and
bare light bulbs. Anything that could be rusty was rusty. Anything
that could be mouldy was mouldy, and flies hung around like whores
on street corners. It didn’t stink as much as it should but there
was a stench here that hung about. There were no discernible rooms.
What looked like what was once a dining room was now a mechanics
dumping ground. What looked like a kitchen now looked like
something you wouldn’t want to sit in let alone cook a meal in
though there was still a cooker but it was brown and green and
covered in congealed fat and grime. Cupboard doors hung off hinges
and pots and pans and plates and mugs were strewn here there and
everywhere. The kitchen led through to a hallway where on a table
was a box with six more shotgun shells. Simon put the axe down,
replaced the fired round and put the other five in his pockets
making them bulge and dig into his thighs.

Another moan and then laughter. Two
sets of laughter; one was wheezy the other sounded muted as if
behind a hand. The moan went on and on and sounded both painful and
excited. At the end of the hallway there was a set of stairs and
the soft yellow light that Simon had seen outside was clearly
visible up there. From upstairs the sound of bed springs squeaking
and heavy movement was ended with more moaning and laughter and
talking too.

‘
Please don’t be
Lucy.’ Simon said as there was another moan only this one was full
of pain.

Simon ran up the stairs, saw that the
light was coming from the room at the very end of the hallway and
headed that way. His cheeks felt wet and he didn’t know if that was
from tears or sweat. Clumsily he dropped the axe, but before he
could react he was outside the room and then inside the room with
the shotgun raised and he was shouting, ‘Let her go you fucking
animals!’ and there was a commotion and two men moved quickly away
from the bed and they turned to see who it was that had come
storming in and their hard cocks swayed and pointed at Simon like
their dirty fingers did, and their eyes were wide and their mouths
open in shock as the man they saw in front of them had a gun and it
was aimed at them, ‘Who the fuck is you,’ one of them said and
Simon guessed it was Harry because the other said, ‘He’s got yer
gun, Harry,’ and the two of them looked at the gun and then back at
Simon. Whoever was on the bed moaned but the three men had other
things on their minds.

‘
Let her fucking go or
I swear to God I will shoot your fucking brains out.’

The brother that wasn’t Harry raised
his hands and now Simon saw that they were both totally naked.
Harry raised his hands too, mimicking his brother, and he looked to
his brother and then to the girl on the bed and then with curious
eyes back to Simon.

‘
Let who go? Her?’ He
gestured to the girl on the bed who was naked and on her belly and
covered in cuts and bruises and claw marks. She had pale skin, pale
like Lucy’s. She had dark hair, dark like Lucy’s and Simon was
crying now as he knew who it was on that bed.

‘
You fucking animals.’
Simon said and pulled the trigger twice.

5

The smell of cordite, blood and sex was
all around him. The yellow light was bright now and outside the
world was black and that blackness tried to come through the
windows and Simon was glad the windows weren’t smashed.

Simon dropped the gun and the woman on
the bed shuddered and moaned and tried to say something but
couldn’t as her mouth was full of rag. She tried to roll over but
couldn’t as there was a large leather restraining belt holding her
down.

Simon stood there for a minute, not too
sure what had happened and why he was here. Everything had happened
so fast. This could be a movie he had seen and was now dreaming it;
re-enacting scenes from that film but altering them to fit his
circumstances. Harry’s body stopped twitching and the blood from
the two men started to pool around Simons trainers. This wasn’t a
dream. This was real and the moans and cries coming from the woman
that he loved and that had been raped countless times slowly
brought him round and Simon leapt over the twitching body of Harry
caring not that half his face was missing and was now decorating
the far wall. Simon rolled Lucy over.