The Hollow Places (19 page)

Simon gestured
for Sarah to get in. She couldn’t help hoping that Simon would give
her a coded message. She was terrified that he would call her
Rabbit again and yet, understanding what that would mean this time,
she longed for it.

“This is our
last chance,” she said, as if he didn't know it. Instead of a
reply, there was his hand, empty, not so much helping her up as
jutting out like a dead branch. She turned away from him so he
wouldn't see her tears and pulled herself up into the stinking
cab.

Chapter Thirty-One

Will sat at the kitchen table, head in his hands. The
Third had been present all evening, but, unusually, it hadn't
seemed bothered with him. Until now.

He was drunk
and it was not best pleased.

He didn’t
usually drink. Not only did the Third want its subjects clean, but
alcohol didn’t go well with his medication. After half a litre of
Vodka he was well on his way to oblivion.

Fuck it, he
had thought. If I'm going to die tonight, I may as well enjoy a
drink. And another. And another.

It wasn't for
certain that he was going to die, but if half of what Firdy had
told him was true, it was a safe bet. Three days ago, Firdy had
introduced himself and his dog and had talked for an hour without a
pause.

“It's so
frustrating having to live like this,” he had said. “Always in the
shadows. You don't mind if I sit and talk with you for a while, do
you?”

“No,” Will had
said. “Of course not.”

He had
listened as Firdy talked without pause, speaking of the future as a
means to rewrite the past. He rubbed his gloved hands together and
outlined Will's role in his plan.

“You're not
the only one,” he had said. “There are six others. But only you and
Simon have to make the extra sacrifice.”

“Why does it
want my son?”

“Because you
have one. He might be there to make up the numbers for all I know,
I don't ask the Third questions, but you should prepare yourself.
And him.”

“Why are you
telling me this?” Will had asked. He had been chewing on the inside
of his cheek and swallowed a mouthful of blood.

“Because
there's nothing you can do about it,” Firdy had said, “and because
I've wanted to tell somebody for a long time. I've been carrying it
around all on my own; I want to get it out of my head, to see what
it looks like.”

Who better to
divulge a secret to than someone who wasn't going to live to repeat
it.

*

Knowing that he was
thinking in circles, he attempted to clear his mind, but he was too
pissed. He ran over and over what was going to happen when his
ex-wife realised that their son was missing. By quitting the
drinking and taking the pills, he'd managed to assuage her concerns
enough to create a false sense of security. Tonight he had
destroyed any hope of redemption.

He imagined
his ex's panic rising each time she phoned them and got their
outgoing voicemail messages.

“This is the
voicemail service for … William Gordon … Please leave a message
after the tone.”

No doubt she
would call him a crazy bastard and say that if anything happened to
Zak she'd kill him.

“Zak here. I
can't get to the phone right now. Leave a message and I'll get back
to you. Or not. See ya.”

He imagined
police at the station listening to the stored messages, dutifully
transcribing them, saving the documents.

Eventually his
ex would turn up at the flat, probably with her sister. It wouldn't
be the first time. They’d hammer on the door and the window, but by
then it would be too late. He and Zak would already be gone. The
neighbours would ignore the noise. They'd got used to the banging
and the shouting and the crying. He was the crazy bastard next door
after all. Everyone knew it.

It was as
clear to him as if it had already happened. The only variable was
whether or not he left a note.

He had managed
to write ‘Vanessa’ at the top of the page. Now he scribbled that
out and wrote ‘V’. Then he crossed that out too and rewrote
‘Vanessa’.

If he was in
her position, he’d want to know not to look for the bodies, but how
do you put something like that into words? To a mother? How could
he leave a note on a scrap of paper that was more suited to a
shopping list than this?

Maybe it was
better to go without saying goodbye after all.

He picked up
the bottle of vodka for a hearty swig and felt the Third squeeze,
which caused him to drop it. It hit the floor.

“Okay, okay,”
he said. “Damn.”

The Third was
tunnelling in and out of his mind, its comparative subtlety of
recent years abandoned.

Unable to
think, there was nothing more he could do but wait, so he let his
forehead drop against the cool surface of the table. He imagined
the laminate siphoning confusion from him along with his
warmth.

Later, cheek
against the surface, his ear pressed to the wood, he heard waves
and, as ever, table or no table, he heard the whispers,
almost-recognisable shapes and patterns that folded in on
themselves, dividing, disintegrating, like him.

A growl rose
steadily.

It was the
sound of an engine.

Idling.

Stopping.

“Okay,” he
told the Third, his palm pressed against his head. “I'm doing it,
aren't I? I'm doing it.” He made his way to the rear of the flat,
using the walls for support.

It was silent
at the bedroom door. When Zak’s friends were quiet, it generally
meant that they were up to something, but with Zak what you saw, or
heard, was what you got. He was trusting and upfront. If he wanted
something, he asked for it. On the one occasion that Zak had broken
something in the flat – the CD changer - he had said: “Sorry, dad,
but I did warn you.” Bold, courageous and honest, he was all the
things his father was not.

Will unlocked
the door.

His son was
asleep in front of the playstation. He was still holding the
control in one hand. The television screen was showing static, a
strange lullaby.

If he could
have taken his son’s place, he would have done it in a moment, but
the Third wanted both of them.

It squeezed
again.

“Okay, you
fucking thing, okay.”

Will didn't
waste time with a garbled goodbye. He'd taken care of that on the
way here. As far as he was concerned, they had both ceased to exist
the moment they entered his flat.

Someone
knocked on the door using their knuckles.

“Wake up,”
Will said and gently slapped Zak's face. “It's time we weren't
here, mate.”

It was a two storey building,
purpose-built as two flats, sitting in the middle of a short row of
similar buildings. The upper flat had a small balcony with flowers
and a hanging basket. A small, black cat tapped its way over the
railing and eyed Simon curiously. The lower flat, with which he was
concerned, had a small yard, too overgrown and cluttered with black
bags to be called a garden. One bag had been gutted, probably by
the cat, and its contents – tea bags, spaghetti, fast food
containers – lay strewn over the bottom steps down to the door

After
knocking, Simon felt himself sway and grabbed the wall to steady
himself.

Get it over
with, he told himself, though he didn't quite know why.

Get on with
it.

Forget about
goodbyes.

By the time
the door opened he was holding on to the wall with both hands to
stop himself falling. His shock at seeing Will sobered him
somewhat. It had only been a day since he had seen the man at the
edge of the cliff, weeping and tripping over his feet in the dark,
swinging torchlight left and right, clothes muddy and torn. Today,
if it was possible, he looked worse than he had then. His white
shirt was saturated with sweat and his skin was eerily pale. Where
he had colour, he was blotchy. He looked as if he was about to
throw up.

“Firdy sent
you?” Will said. “He's laughing at you.”

“Are you
ready?” said Simon.

Will reached
behind him and a skinny boy in a grey tracksuit approached them. He
didn't appear to be into his teens. He had his father's eyes, red
from crying or lack of sleep, or both.

In the
hallway, Simon noticed a mess of unopened letters in plastic
supermarket carrier bags. There were dozens of bags and cardboard
boxes stacked up on top of each other, sinking into the ones
beneath. There was a sense of the walls closing in.

“Where is
Firdy?” asked Will.

“He's in the
van.”

Will's eyes
were wide and haunted as he gazed at the two heads visible through
the windscreen; Firdy and Sarah.

Simon smelled
the alcohol on Will and realised that this was the source of his
nausea. It also explained Firdy’s sloppy driving on the way here.
It hadn't just been nerves. Thanks to Will, they were all drunk.
Whatever the Third was doing, it had connected them. He could feel
Will's nausea, his anxiety, his desire to let go and have this all
over with, quickly. Knowing their origin, he reeled away from the
feelings and succeeded in maintaining his sense of self.

He wondered if
Will's inebriation was part of the reason for Firdy's
self-disclosure with the diary. For better or worse, the truth had
emerged. He only hoped that Sarah never found out what happened to
their father.

As Will lead
the boy out of the flat, he turned to Simon and said:

“Did you do
what I said? Did you tell her you loved her?”

“It's time we
weren't here, mate,” Simon said and Will backed away from him, from
his words. They both looked confused, disappointed and afraid.

*

As Firdy slid open the
side door, Will strained to see what was in the darkness. They all
heard the slither of the thing dragging its rope over the wood
panel floor. Its eyes glinted. Otherwise, the back of the van was
in total darkness.

“In,” said
Firdy. When neither Will nor Zak moved, Firdy grabbed the boy by an
arm.

“Okay, okay,”
Will said. “Let's get this over with.” He shoved his son inside
-

“What's going
on, Dad? What's in here? What is it?”

- and followed
him in.

“It's going to
be okay.”

The familiar
lie.

Firdy shut the
door on them, sealing them in darkness.

“Economy
class,” he said. “Room for three more.”

*

Sarah couldn’t breathe;
her thoughts choked her. She asked Simon to wind down his window,
but the wind roaring at them made her demand to have it shut
again.

Firdy wrenched
the wheel left and the van lurched. A scream came from behind. Zak,
presumably. The sound was muffled. Will, presumably.

Simon faced
forward, relaxed but alert. He appeared to have accepted his part
in all this, which frightened Sarah most of all.

She was the
only one who could make a difference. Whatever it was that turned
Simon into this thing, this automaton, it could read his mind, but
she remained free to think. Whether they lived or died was her
responsibility, she realised, and the knowledge weighed heavily on
her. She would only make things worse if her plan went wrong.
First, however, she needed a plan.

She tried to
reassure herself with the knowledge that a fate worse than death
might be waiting for them. It worked.

The element of
surprise, Simon used to tell her, would make up for what she lacked
in size. Don't let them see it coming.

See what
coming? she thought.

A sudden
change in direction threw her from her scheming into Simon’s
shoulder, who sat steadfastly throughout the turn, having
anticipated the bend. The jolt to her shoulder sent shockwaves
through her. She felt faint.

They were off
the main road now and Firdy weaved the van through backstreets,
over speed bumps and between cars that were parked bumper to bumper
on either side. They rolled beneath overhanging branches, around
blind corners. After six or seven minutes descending ever deeper
into this suburban terrain, Firdy stopped the van and told Simon to
get out.

Sarah wanted
to whisper to him that it was going to be okay, that she would take
care of this, the way he had taken care of them since their mother
died and their father disappeared, but nothing came out. Her eyes
were closing.

“Go to sleep,”
Simon said and she did.

*

When she woke, they
were moving again. It was strangely comforting. As long as they
were moving they were okay, she supposed, until she heard wailing
behind her.

It had been
muffled, but it was a woman's voice, not Zak.

Simon’s arms
were folded tight across his chest and his head nodded to a slow
rhythm, the only signs of his effort to remain calm. His eyes
appeared to be fixed on the road ahead, but they were glazed over;
not without light, but far, far away.

Firdy looked
up at the moon. There was a sense of pieces being slotted into
place. They were all part of his game. His lips had drawn back into
something halfway between a grimace and a smile. Sarah hoped that
they might be pulled over by the police for speeding and she
fantasised for a moment how that might play out, but was
disappointed by what she saw. Firdy would go through the motions,
politely answering all of their questions until ultimately he
agreed to open up the back of the van, at which point he'd release
the thing on the rope.

Nothing could
stop Firdy now. He was tapping a drumbeat on the wheel.

The van bumped
up a kerb and stopped sharply.

“Watch her,”
Firdy told Simon and then got out.

He had parked
in a gravel wasteland, flanked by ageing trees, dead grass and
dirt. Three storeys of a fire-bombed building loomed over them.
According to the fragment of a sign that remained it had once been
a tacky nightclub and, judging by wording revealed by the fire, it
had once had a life as a warehouse.