The Hollow Places (4 page)

Someone was
looking for him or the French woman.

Perhaps, he
thought, this person had seen him last night and had returned in
the safety afforded by 24 hours. Or perhaps it was someone
following the tracks, looking for evidence. Finding it. He'd been
sloppy. He'd been exhausted. He'd been high. Twenty Questions.

He opened his
eyes again when, in the distance, he heard a snort and saw that the
torch bearer had given up on training the light in his direction
and was now facing the other way, so that it created a halo,
revealing a male figure, sitting on the ground, his elbows resting
on his knees. The man was not crying but weeping. He had a coughing
fit through the tears and wiped his face with his fists. He growled
at himself in anger and thumped the ground, stamped a foot.

Simon didn't
imagine that this was the boyfriend. The father perhaps. He
wondered if this man had seen what he had done last night but had
been powerless or too afraid to stop it, and had returned here,
like him, to reignite his grief and have it soar. His cries went
up, promising minute relief but ultimately falling dead among the
branches. He sat in the middle, suffering, his breath hitching,
waiting it out.

Every sound
the man made caused Simon to wince. He could feel his throat
burning, as though he was going to cry, but he didn't dare lose
control.

The man's
grief seemed both old and new, as if he was unhappy for many
reasons, which were presenting themselves to him in a dismal
procession.

If this was
the French girl's father, Simon admitted, then he had robbed the
man of the one thing that was keeping him alive.

He wished that
he hadn't come back and seen this. He knew that he could have gone
anywhere to ponder his actions and come to terms with what he had
done, but Sarah's questioning had driven him toward the extra
flagellation that returning to the cliff would afford him. As good
as he was at burying his emotions, this night would keep him in
nightmares for the rest of his life.

*

Twenty more paces would
have brought Simon to the edge and that was where the man had
stopped, swinging his big head left and right, gazing down into the
tumultuous waves. He was portly and ungainly, like a PE teacher he
had once had, and he was wearing a short, waxy jacket that hissed
when he moved.

Simon wondered
if the man was working himself up to jump and again he felt
contradictory urges: the muscles of his legs tensed, ready to
spring from his hiding place and haul him back, because he had sent
too many people into the unknown to watch it happen again without
the demand of the Creature and yet any attempt to save him would
mean giving himself away.

Suicide or
not, the man's presence here posed questions that were becoming
increasingly intolerable. The torch had fallen from his fingers and
lay at his feet spilling light through fallen branches; a gust of
wind tussled his hair and no other part of him moved. He didn't
even appear to be breathing and Simon knew that it wouldn't be long
before he toppled over the edge like a domino.

Terrified and
surprised by himself, Simon found that he was drifting forward to
stop him when the man bent down for his torch, groaned and,
contrary to Simon's expectations, turned to retrace his steps
through the forest.

Simon
crouched, ready to defend himself, but while the man passed nearby,
he continued into darkness, back towards the road, torch light
fading.

Simon
followed.

Near the
cliff, where the ground had been damp, Simon had moved quietly, but
now, despite his best efforts, dry leaves and twigs crunched
underfoot, obvious to his ears. A small branch snapped and he
cursed to himself, ducking, but the man ahead kept moving, making a
racket himself and even tripping and falling a couple of times in
his hurry to get out of the trees. Simon walked as quickly as he
dared, determined to keep up; almost failing.

As the man
reached the tarmac road, Simon was forced to stop because any noise
now would give him away. The man walked up the hill and retrieved
keys from his trouser pocket. A white Micra was parked on the verge
up ahead and Simon knew that as soon as the man reached it, this
episode would be over, without answers but, perhaps more
importantly, without being seen. He had done his best. Now it was
time to let go.

He had
successfully kept a low profile over the last couple of years and
had been lucky too, even passing undetected on the one occasion he
had been stopped by police for speeding, so why in the hell was he
now stumbling out of the forest and saying:

“Hi.”

The man turned
as if yanked by a rope. His smart trousers and sensible, nylon
jacket bore the marks of his venture into the woods, but nothing
more so than his leather shoes, which were caked with mud. His hair
was greasy, abandoned. His eyes, terrified, gave away the fact that
whatever he had been doing in the woods, it was a guilty secret. He
watched, dumbstruck as Simon descended the bank and moved towards
him over the road.

“I saw you,”
Simon said, with deliberate ambiguity.

The man's face
slackened, but his eyes hardened. Simon assumed that he was making
calculations, despite his apparent shock. The fight or flight
response, but in slow-motion.

“What do you
want?” the man asked.

Good question.
He hadn't really had time to think about it.

“I heard you,”
Simon said. “Are you ok?”

“Fine.
Goodbye.”

Simon kept
coming and the man stepped back, stumbling again. He seemed to be
slurring his words.

“Why here?”
Simon said. “Why this place?”

The man
shrugged.

“Have you lost
something?”

“Everything,”
he said. And then: “Haven't we all?” It was the first thing he said
that didn't seem to have been calculated, and he didn't regret his
spontaneity; he was angry. Simon, on the other hand, was now having
second thoughts. Since he had shown his face to this man, here
where he had delivered the French girl, he couldn't let him leave.
Perhaps it would have been better for him to have lived with the
curiosity and anxiety than to kill, particularly as he had not been
selected by the Creature. Wrong place. Wrong time. For both of
them.

It might have
sounded like a normal exhalation, but in fact it was a sigh; having
decided to kill him, Simon became more bold.

“Why were you
in the trees?”

The man sensed
the shift in his tone and stood staring down at him for almost a
minute. He clenched and unclenched big fists, struggling to remain
calm. Seeing that Simon was implacable, he said very clearly:

“Let’s not
make this worse than it needs to be. I’m walking away.”

“Tell me,”
Simon said.

The man only
shrugged. “You've decided that you have to kill me,” he said, “so
what benefit is it to me if I tell you? You're not a torturer. So
I'll take my chances.”

After all the
pleas for help he had heard over the months, insane bargains,
impossible promises and lies, no-one had ever spoken to him this
coolly in such circumstances. His manner was detached, as though he
didn't much care about survival and he found this experience sad
not frightening.

“This doesn't
have to be unpleasant,” Simon said. “Maybe we can make a deal.”

“You don't
have anything to bargain with. I don't care what you've seen or
what you know or what you think you know. I've seen it all.”

“Who are
you?”

“I'm the one
who's holding all the cards. And if someone like me has all the
cards, what does that say about you, you dipshit? Go home,” he
said. “Tell Sarah you love her. Make her understand. Something's
coming. Make sure she understands. This is the warning I never
had.”

The man
turned, heading to his car without a look back. Simon demanded his
name, but he had been right, he didn't have anything to barter
with. The man had known Sarah's name and yet was completely unknown
to Simon. There was little he could do but watch him crunch the
stones at the side of the road, open up his door and get
inside.

Make her
understand.

This is the
warning I never had.

The Micra's
engine brought Simon round. He started towards the car, but skidded
on the gravel, falling to his hands and knees.

“Wait!”

The car pulled
away, bathing Simon in red light.

The chicken was burnt. Sarah glugged down half a glass
of white wine, refilled it and then settled down to eat dinner on
her lap beside her brother.

On the
television screen, giant spiders spilled from fast food containers
and shoeboxes, from under the bed and out of coffee cups,
ultimately clambering over cars and hedges, over people’s faces,
spinning webs the size of parasols between tree branches.

Simon would
normally have been halfway through his meal by the time Sarah sat
down, but instead he chewed mechanically, thinking of the man by
the cliff.

Make her
understand.

This is the
warning I never had.

He glanced
across at her. She had pried a small bone from a drumstick and was
stripping it with her front teeth. She worked quickly, but gave up
on it when it got difficult, discarding it on the edge of the plate
and moving on to the next.

“Are you
really watching this?” Sarah asked. Simon nodded, his mind far, far
from home. “Can we talk now? About mum and dad.”

He was
desperate to stall, not least of all because his attempt to clear
his head had made him more anxious. Echoing and burbling with
almost forgotten voices, he wanted to throw himself down and drown
amongst them.

“Was it really
suicide?” Sarah asked. She assumed he had all the answers. Until a
couple of hours ago, he could almost have believed that it was
true.

The cavern
yawned and his memory of their father's disappearance snatched a
breath.

His father had
told him to look after his sister and then walked out of the front
door, leaving his keys on the hook. He had been the last person to
see him. His father hadn't seemed under duress. He had been
relaxed. Even relieved.

“You'll be
alright,” he had said with a pat on his shoulder and then he was
gone without a look back.

Sarah
discarded her meal on the table in front of them.

Simon opened
his mouth to speak, not yet knowing what he was going to say, but
as he did so he felt the familiar squeezing sensation at the nape
of his neck, like a thumb and forefinger probing and then pinching.
He arched his back slightly as the shockwave ran down his
spine.

As the
Creature made its presence felt within him, he focussed his mind on
his breathing, letting go of his personality, and his whirling
thoughts, letting the prospect of a tricky conversation about their
dead father to slip away. As the Creature took up residence, Simon
allowed himself to become empty. He had to become the servant
again. The vessel.

So soon?

He could feel
the nefarious sensation of the thing working its way into position.
He felt its 'fingers' climbing his vertebra, pressing on his skull,
through, tapping inside his brain, searching out the familiar
pathways.

“Simon?”

Rather than
being displaced as one might expect, he felt more vital than ever.
The Creature could see what he could see and it could express its
pleasure or otherwise, but he remained in control. He rocked gently
with the adrenaline rush and attempted to stay calm.

The old, worn
cushions cradled the sore muscles of his back. The tray, warmed by
the plate, was a comfortable weight on his lap, breathing with him.
His skin buzzed pleasurably, wetly, in the cool air.

He saw the
worry lines of Sarah's forehead, ridges in sandstone. Her hair no
longer appeared to be a jumble of dirty-blonde curls; each strand
had its purpose and place within an overarching pattern, not
reminiscent of dead cells at all, but of a substance that
effectively caught and reflected the light so it appeared that they
radiated light of their own. Her eyes, chestnut brown with fiery
flecks of amber, like his, glistened with tears.

She was
disappointed and he wouldn't comfort her. The Creature's
consciousness swelled within him, its gossamer tendrils stiffening,
announcing its desire for yet another delivery. It took up position
within him so swiftly that he didn't have time to prepare for the
night's work ahead. He continued to focus on his breathing, but
couldn't help a stab of anxiety.

Even serial
killers at their most prolific did not often take people as
frequently as he had done in the last two months. When killers
picked up their pace like this, they left objects behind, they were
seen, people made connections. He knew he was likely to get caught
soon. It would seem that the man he followed last night had already
been following him. Everything was going to shit. Fast.

The growing
presence of the Creature, however, was a drug, and gradually, he
began to feel invincible, knowing that It would steer him around
the danger. He felt he could handle anything, which was useful,
because anything could happen.

He turned to
his sister to make an excuse to leave, but he felt the squeeze in
his skull the moment he looked at her. He immediately turned away,
but there was no denying what had happened. The sensation had been
sharp and definite.

He looked at
her again. She was attempting to keep her emotions in check, as was
he.

Squeeze.

There was no
time for explanations or goodbyes.

The Creature
had chosen her and now he had a job to do.

“We're going out,” said Simon, tempering a headache
that would cripple him if he didn't act on the Creature's
instruction. He stood. “Now.”