The Hollow Places (2 page)

Simon peered
over the edge in time to see her body disappear into an enormous
wave. It arced over the rocks and plucked her out of the air. Sea
water crashed against the cliff, showering Simon’s face, shoulders
and chest. The woman's body was gone. Taken.

Only once had
he been this close to the Creature.

Three things contributed to Simon's survival and the
survival of his sister. He delivered whoever the Creature asked him
to, he thought ahead and he knew when and how to stop thinking
entirely. He switched between modes as easily as he had switched
gears in the car he had dumped.

Huge
rainddrops spattered on his raincoat - thinking ahead - which was
good, because the rain would also help to confuse any evidence he
had left behind.

As he walked,
he was dimly aware of the Creature, circling his mind. It was doing
so more proprietorially than with any real interest, but he made
sure to give it nothing to consider or question anyway.

He turned to
meditation. As he strolled along the narrow paths, the muddy roads
and later the glistening streets, he imagined that everything was
being washed clean. Even him.

He counted the
footsteps that disturbed the flooded gutters and caused the
reflected sky to tremble; he counted street lamps that turned
raindrops into sparks; and he counted the occasional car that held
him in its headlights before passing by, as if satisfied that he
wasn't the one they were looking for.

*

Home was a two-storey
brick building, boxy with a bay window, much like its suburban
neighbours. He hadn’t done any work on it since he inherited it, so
it remained old-fashioned and in disrepair. He had intended to tidy
things up, to repaint the walls and fix the leak in the bathroom,
to lay wooden flooring and fix the hinges on the cupboards, or
perhaps replace the kitchen entirely, with spotlights and an
electric cooker instead of a microwave and a second-hand electric
hob plugged into the mains.

He had begun
the project well, ripping up the carpets in the bedrooms and
stripping the peeling paper from the stairway and the bathroom
walls. He'd removed the broken cupboard doors and had bullied
furniture into what was now a store room downstairs in order to
make room for repair work and painting. Having done this, however,
he discovered that he lacked the proper motivation to finish a
single one of the jobs.

Having
discarded the things he didn't want, he discovered that it was
enough that they were gone.

He was not
short of funds, thanks to his inheritance from his father, via his
mother, so he could have paid a builder to come in and do it all
for him, but he refused. He never had any guests or workmen inside
the house. It was a fortress and a sanctuary. Neither needed to be
pretty.

Structurally,
it was sound and his father had upgraded the windows and doors on
every part of the house. The new front and back doors were fitted
with toughened security glass and a turn of the handle sent five
metal bolts into the frame with a clack. It wouldn't keep an
intruder out if they were determined, but it would slow them down
and hopefully that would be all he needed.

From the
outside, it looked like any other house on their Essex street, only
somrwhat shabbier. It was set back from the road by a semi-circular
drive, on which sat his shitty, metallic-blue Toyota Corolla, and
was protected from view by evergreens, which also flanked the
property.

Although their
nearest neighbour was thirty seconds walk away, he sometimes felt
as though he was alone, living in one of the nearby forests. While
this was good for privacy, which he protected fiercely, it also
reminded him of events that he would sooner block out.

If trees
really did communicate, then the news of what he had done on the
cliff had reached home before him. He glanced up at the foreboding
branches before unlocking the front door and ducking inside.

He was met by
the familiar disarray of the kitchen/diner, where every available
surface was occupied, not at all like those show homes in the
adverts. This was real-life. Yet there remained an otherness to the
house, as though he was looking at it all through tissue paper. He
felt like he’d been away for years, although it had only been one
night, and almost felt himself drifting across the room like a
ghost.

It was not the
house that was in any way unreal, he knew, it was him. He was still
connected to the Creature and would be until It released him,
minutes or hours from now. It was reasonable to assume that his
work was done for the night, but he could feel It circling his
mind. It was observing, but It made no further demands.

He set about
domestic chores, although his body wanted him to collapse and
dream. Sleeping while the Creature was in residence was the most
dangerous thing of all, because that's when thoughts rose up,
unbidden, and who knew what the mind would throw up when it was
moving towards unconsciousness, crazy things, repressed memories,
the truth. Instead, he emptied the washing machine and hung an
armful of wet clothes over the radiators. They looked like
multicoloured skins. He counted them as he went … sixteen.

The sink was
full of cups and plates, pots and pans, one in particular burnt
black from an over-ambitious attempt to make flapjacks using
convection setting on the microwave. He had left it to soak, but
that had been some days ago and now it was a science project. He
attempted to root out the plug to release the sludge of water, but
there was no plug, only rotting food – peas, rice, spaghetti - and
hair.

He unloaded
the sink, so he could unblock it with the plunger.

One, two,
three, four, five …

Then, he began
washing up.

Six dinner
plates.

Three
breakfast bowls.

Eight
forks.

Five desert
spoons.

Five tea
spoons. There should have been six, but one of them had gone
missing. He wondered if it wouldn’t have been better to pare down
to two of everything, rather than have to deal with all this shit
he had inherited.

Eleven
knives.

Throw it all
away.

A
corkscrew.

A manual
juicer.

An electric
tin opener. Broken.

He heard a
toilet flush upstairs and then the sound of footsteps, on the
stairs, in the hall.

“Hi,” the girl
said.

Simon rinsed
and stacked. Rinsed. Stacked.

She sat down
at the breakfast bar and scooped up her college papers, underneath
which lurked the mail from the last few days. For want of an empty
space, she dumped them all on the floor next to her stool, then
gave the same treatment to a large clothing catalogue and
miscellaneous magazines and TV guides. She appeared to have been
infected by Simon's cleaning drive, but then she uncovered what she
had been looking for. She opened up the cardboard box and helped
herself to a slice of cold pizza.

“Want some?”
she asked.

Simon glanced
at her and saw that she was wearing her blue dressing gown. The
slice of pizza in her hand was yellow and green. She took a bite
with her perfect, little teeth and a layer of hard cheese slid from
the pizza base. She stuffed it into her mouth with her little
finger. Although he had been desperately hungry, the sight turned
his stomach. He bent over the sink and returned to scrubbing the
non-stick surface from a frying pan.

“You know,”
she said, above the sound of scouring, “I’ve only got revision
today. I could skip college. We could do something.”

He could hear
her flicking through the pages of a magazine.

“Sally,” he
said. “I think you should go to college today. Exams are
important.”

“They're not
even real exams,” she replied, not picking up on the fact that he'd
called her Sally. “They're mocks, remember? And I can study at
home, as if I need to. I'd probably end up skipping out later
anyway. They're like kids. I'd quite like an adult conversation, or
as close as I can get to one with you.”

“I think it
would be good for you to get out of the house today, Sally.”

“We could go
to the park,” she suggested. “Scare the animals. Give them
names.”

“Perhaps if I
ignore her,” Simon thought. “Perhaps she'll get bored and go away
of her own accord.”

He hung the
frying pan on the wall and dried his hands, before returning to the
laundry, deciding to separate the pile into bright colours, dark
colours and whites. Good. That was the next five minutes accounted
for.

Her clothes
were all mixed in with his. Most of her items went into the bright
colours pile. She had put her tie-dyed dress into the basket, which
made things a little bit more complicated. He'd have to separate
the bright colours into two piles. He took his time, concentrating
only on what he was doing, ignoring the smell of a pizza slice
warming in the microwave and the sound of beeping when it was
done.

The black pile
he created comprised of fleecy jumpers, combat trousers and
t-shirts, all largely the same colour, but different to his eye,
because they were his clothes, most of which he had bought at army
and navy stores a couple of years ago. He also extracted several
pairs of black socks, a woolly hat and a pair of fingerless gloves
from the mound of dirty clothes that had grown around the laundry
basket like a tumour.

He was getting
there.

Slowly.

Slowly was
good.

Behind him,
the girl dropped her magazine onto the floor where it landed with a
slap. She made a farting sound with her mouth and switched the
kettle on.

“Coffee?” she
asked.

“No.”

“Tea?”

“No, Sally. No
tea.”

“Hot
chocolate?”

He
straightened up, but still didn't look at her. “Go to college,
Sal,” he said.

The girl
sighed again. “Will you stop calling me that? I hate it.”

The white pile
was always their smallest collection of clothing, but now, with the
addition of a single bedsheet and a couple of pillowcases, he had
enough for a full load. As he filled the machine, her bras reminded
him that she wasn't a girl any more. Like him, she had grown up
quickly. She was just bored, playing silly, but it was irritating
nonetheless. He needed her out of his (thoughts) space, because
despite the locks on the doors and all the security glass, he had a
key; he was the crack in the windscreen.

“You were
quiet last night. Maybe we can hang out today; have some fun.
Remember that? Fun?”

“Maybe when
you get back,” Simon said.

“But I
can-“

He faced her
at last and his expression cut her off mid-sentence. She dropped
her pizza.

“Go away,” he
said and she actually ran, taking the stairs quickly but one at a
time. Stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp.

Perhaps she
was still a kid after all, masquerading as an adult, as was he.

He heard her
door slam shut.

Good.

Slam all the
doors. The further away the better.

At six in the evening, Simon woke slumped over the
kitchen counter. His first thought was of Sarah and he groaned as
he allowed the memories to spiral up.

He had
frightened and upset her, but she should have known better than to
press him, particularly after he’d been out all night. What did she
think he'd been doing? Clubbing?

He had called
her Sally half a dozen times. Yes, Sally. No, Sally. He had
explained that he'd only call her that when something was wrong,
but she had remained oblivious to his signals.

Maybe he
needed to let her in on how much danger surrounded them. While he
had no wish to make her afraid to leave the house, he did need her
to be more alert.

Observing
these thoughts, he analysed them and let them go. His anger with
her behaviour was really anger with himself. She trusted him to
make everything all right and he knew he was failing her. While her
ignorance was the main danger to her, it was the thing he wanted to
preserve most. Her ignorance was innocence.

He paced the
kitchen, getting the feeling back in his legs, knowing that by the
time she came home he would be calm and that they would attempt to
make cornflake cakes and everything would be cool again for a
while.

He reached for
the remaining slice of pizza, which had sickened him earlier, and
took half of it down in one bite. It was cold and wet and tasted of
nothing, certainly nothing good, but his need was great and he
shoved the remainder into his mouth. So it was that Sarah came home
and found him chewing furiously. As he made room to speak to her,
she made for the stairs. Sensible girl … woman ... whatever ...

“Sarah," he
spluttered.

She observed
him carefully. He was never what she would consider relaxed. Early
one morning, she had pushed his door open to see if he was home and
he had been lying on his mattress on the floor, on his back,
fully-clothed, staring at the ceiling.

"Go," he had
said. He hadn't even turned to look at her. At the time, she had
wondered if that was how he always slept, waiting for morning,
trainers on, alert, ready for action, but since then she had seen
him in all manners, sleeping at the counter, on the kitchen floor,
on the stair. He always woke before she reached him.

Often, he
smelled as though he had been to bars and she wondered if he had
been clubbing without her, though she never smelled alcohol on his
breath - had never seen him drink in fact, except for one three-day
marathon session after mum died. Aside from that, he had never been
so out of it that he hadn't been able to open at least one eye
before she got close enough to check he was still breathing.