The Hollow Places (9 page)

Your time will
come, he thought and she settled somewhat, though he imagined that
she was facing the exit, eyes wide in the dark, tapping her
claws.

The Third
hadn't been keen on his taking the Dog or Cat with him, but his
confidence in their ability had convinced her to let him try. He
had been looking forward to this night for weeks; he wasn't about
to do anything to jeopardise its success. The Third knew that,
though she kept a close and constant watch on his thoughts and
(stabbed) tugged every now and then when something worried her.

It was all
going to be okay though. Sarah had got away, but he and the Cat
would soon retrieve her. It was a good thing he had decided to
bring her as she'd be useful to him if anything else unexpected
happened. He knew that sometimes she left home and hunted; she was
a good tracker and based on appearance alone she'd be good for
crowd control.

He had
everything worked out.

You see, he
thought. You see how I care for you.

He was
changing lane to head for the centre of London when he felt a
sudden sensation of falling.

It was as if
he had been dropped.

He hit the
brakes, too hard, and swerved across three lanes, the back fanning
out. He wasn't wearing his seatbelt so the sudden drop in speed
threw his body into the wheel. He freed his hand and turned the
wheel hard to correct the skid, but his foot slipped from the brake
and hit the accelerator. He swerved and braked again, tires
screaming.

A truck moved
over to the middle lane to avoid him and rushed by, its
canvas-covered load flapping like a sail. It was all multi-coloured
lights and a roar of disapproval.

On the hard
shoulder, Firdy regained some semblance of control. He hit the bank
and skidded to a stop. Something came off the van. A hub cap. It
rolled on and on and then veered into the lanes of traffic.

Firdy rested
his head against the steering wheel, hostage to a panic that was
less to do with the fact that he had almost died, but more because
the Third was gone and it had happened in a matter of seconds. She
had never withdrawn so quickly before. It meant that something was
wrong, something he didn't want to think about.

The Cat was
mewing in the back, though it sounded more like a dog's whine or a
child's groan. She was a big Cat. She was missing the Third too.
For a while she would be lost without her.

“It’ll pass,”
he said out loud. The sound of his voice, however, only served to
punctuate the loneliness and make any attempts to defeat it seem
futile.

He had to get
out of the van. The nothingness, the silence, was crushing him. He
fumbled the door open and half-fell out of the cab. His knees
buckled and he had to haul himself up, stagger around the van. He
stumbled up the bank and sat down in the wild grass, breathing
hard.

Take a moment,
he told himself. It's always the same. It always feels like this,
but I'm still here.

He became
aware of trucks thundering by. The world – their world – was
enormous, sprawling, and it would destroy him, because he didn't
fit.

The vehicles'
momentum, however, reminded him that although it may be impossible
to complete the mission, he should take the opportunity to make up
time. He had to hope that the Third would return as usual,
refreshed and recharged, refocussed and ready. She could do so
before the day was out.

It would get
better.

Another
positive was that his headache was gone. He was free to think broad
and deep without questions and disapproval. He could get things
done; his way.

Knees aching,
he forced himself to his feet and staggered like a much older man
back down to the van. He would have expected it to be rocking from
side to side as the Cat threw herself at the walls, but all was
utterly still, physically and mentally.

He sought his
connection to the animal, which usually persisted even when the
Third was gone, but there was nothing. He grasped at the familiar
strings, but none of them were connected, neither to the Cat nor
the Dog.

He put his ear
to the door, but couldn't hear anything above the occasional sound
of engines on the motorway. He didn't have time for this, so he
lowered the lever, paused for a moment with his weight against the
door to judge the Cat's reaction and then, when he thought it was
safe, he pulled the door open. It was only open a crack when the
Cat slammed against it, knocking him to the floor and leaping over
him, landing with hardly a sound, only the clicking of claws on the
tarmac beyond him. Firdy span on the ground so he was lying on his
stomach, face to face with the animal.

Like the Dog,
its mouth appeared to be a permanent smile.

“It's okay,”
Firdy said. “Alright.” He got to his knees before the Cat began
backing away.

He didn't have
long before somebody saw it and called the police or the National
Enquirer.

Get in the
van, Firdy thought, but the Cat did not respond and so he said it
out loud, enunciating clearly. “Get in the van.”

The Cat bolted
up the incline and paused at the top, half-hidden against a
background of trees.

“Don't do
this,” Firdy said.

It darted over
the summit and beyond the tree line. By the time Firdy had
scrambled back to the top of the hill, she was gone. He couldn't
even tell which direction she had run in. Not without the Third's
help.

Thinking of
the Third now made him feel queasy. He was going to be in big
trouble for losing the Cat. Keeping her hungry no longer seemed
like such a good idea.

He had starved
the Dog too. Although he trusted him more than the Cat, there was a
chance, he realised, that he'd be found lying beside Simon's
half-eaten body.

He called
after the Cat, mentally and vocally, hoping that if he got her back
he could reconnect with her, and then through her reconnect to the
Dog. After a quarter of an hour of trudging through leaves and
branches and vegetation, however, he had to admit that he had no
control over either animal. He barely had control over himself. His
legs were shaking with fear. Everything was falling apart.

The dog kept creeping forward. The rope hissed
against the ground. It was almost impossible for Simon to remain
focused. For a while, he had meditated on the pain in his legs
caused by sitting without moving for so long, but then the pain had
given way to numbness and he turned his attention instead to other
body parts; his rising heartbeat, the ache in his forehead, the
dryness of his throat.

His head
nodded and he blinked hard to stay awake, recalling for inspiration
Firdy's warning that the rope around the dog's neck was intended to
prevent it running away once it had killed him; it was not intended
to protect him.

Its ears
pricked up.

It stood.

Simon shook
the thought from his head. Back to breathing. In. Out. In ... but
the creature remained agitated. It whined, dropped its head and
walked to the door.

Simon felt
what had disturbed it. Clarity was returning. And then it was done,
in the time it takes to fall to the ground.

He and the
dog-thing were now free. Free to think. Free to act. Free to kill.
He had little doubt that the dog would turn on him. It was in the
doorway, still whining, its tail between its legs.

Simon rolled
and managed to get to his feet though his legs felt leaden.

The dog's
enormous head inclined. Staring into its black eyes, Simon was
flooded with adrenaline. He no longer bit back his emotional
response. His hands shook and his legs threatened to buckle as he
backed away. He had never seen anything like this. He didn't know
how to kill it. All he knew was that it intended to prevent him
from leaving and it would die rather than let him go.

It advanced
and he lumbered towards the window. Behind him, the thing barked
and its paws skidded on the boards.

Snapping
jaws.

Simon threw
himself into the curtains, into the nets, into the glass and
through, into the night.

It was dark
for a long time. His legs kicked. He had time to wonder which way
up he was before he hit the ground – feet, shoulder, ear - and
tumbled over and over, skidding along the drive. He may as well
have landed on his head. The only reason he didn’t cry out with
pain was because the collision knocked the wind out of him. He lay
on the stone amid broken glass and his bedroom curtains, wearing
them like a shroud.

When he
unwrapped himself, he saw the dog hanging by the rope that Firdy
had attached to its neck. The other side was still attached to
Simon's desk. The dog whimpered noisily and it kicked its legs,
which caused it to swing like a pendulum. Each time it bashed into
the side of the house it scrabbled at the wall, but it didn't have
that kind of dexterity. If the rope held out, it was going to die.
Simon thought it unwise to trust the knot of a one-handed man any
further and so once again he forced himself to his knees and then
to his feet, swaying, feeling as though he’d been swatted by a
giant hand, but no part of his body was screaming for attention
more than any other and so soon he was hobbling into the house,
arming himself and returning to his room.

Firdy trampled through the long grass,
his joints feeling like broken glass. His mind felt shattered too.
He had been calling for both the Cat and the Dog, but neither of
them had responded. Now, the Cat, the Dog and Simon were all
unknown quantities. The Dog would have guarded Simon for hours had
he not lost his connection to the animal when the Third withdrew.
His plan, to put it simply, was fucked.

The Third
would be furious that he had lost the Cat, but that would not
compare to how she felt about losing Simon. Things were going
badly.

He was losing
time. It wouldn't be long before it was light.

Stay on
mission, Firdy told himself.

He stumbled
down the bank again and returned to the van, relieved that it had
not yet drawn out a recovery vehicle or motorway police.

Opening the
door and climbing in made him cry out with pain; if he hadn't been
alone, he would have bitten it back, but it was a relief to let go.
He used his teeth to remove the glove from his good hand and
examined the hairy, knobbly knuckles that agonised him. He threw
painkillers into his mouth, spilling most of them, swallowing the
rest dry, gagging on their bitterness.

His other hand
was hurting as much as usual, bearable in comparison to the new
aches all over his body. Again, he removed the glove with his
teeth. The hand was swollen, sweaty, red. He tried to move the
stumpy fingers and two of them twitched.

Useless and
disgusting, he thought. In 24 hours it could all be different.

Eyes closed,
he listened to the movement of other vehicles and tried to imagine
that they took his pain with them. Each time anything larger than a
car passed by the van shimmied and he wished that he could be a
part of their world, wished he had a home to return to, memories to
keep him warm, a friend.

The idea of
suicide flowered in his mind. As usual, there was no note nor a
lengthy drive to the edge of a cliff. There was the efficient use
of whatever was to hand.

The perfect
vehicle rocketed by with a rush of noise and a whirl of colour and
then it was gone.

If he timed it
well, his life could be over in a moment. No more pain. No more
loneliness.

No more
anything.

The same thing
as ever stopped him opening the door. The Third needed him. He
still had purpose; at least for one more day. He couldn't give in
until he had exhausted the other option and that meant getting
Sarah back as quickly as possible.

From what she
had said, she wasn't far away. She didn't know it, but she had
given him hope. Capturing her would change everything for him.
Everything.

Simon was relieved to find that Firdy hadn't forced
the door to his mother's room. Sarah’s room, however, had been
devastated. Firdy had turned over her table and trampled everything
that had been on it. He had smashed her photo frames and ripped up
individual photos. He had pulled out every drawer in her chest of
drawers and dumped the contents, before overturning the chest
itself and kicking in the back. Her bed sheets lay coiled on the
floor in a soggy, stinking pile. These were not the actions of a
man who was simply looking for something. Firdy's rage was such
that he had done this even while the creature had been watching.
Knuckles turning white on the doorframe, Simon was immobilised by
thoughts of what Firdy might do now that he was off the lead.

Eventually, he
continued to his own room where the rope securing the dog was
taught and still. He leaned out of the window and saw the animal
hanging below. Its body was limp. Hand over hand, he hauled it
towards him, pausing twice to catch his breath. When it was within
reach, half-resting on the window sill, he stabbed it three times
in the back of the neck, twisting and pulling the knife out, before
dragging the dog completely into the room.

It looked as
though it should never have been alive. As he suspected, it wasn’t
all dog. There were other things in there. It was part rodent
perhaps. And those teeth …

He cut its
throat for good measure, which produced little blood, and wiped the
knife on a dry patch of fur before sliding it into his trouser
pocket.

One dead.

Two to go.

A small service station came into view and Firdy was
tempted to stop for a few minutes. Perhaps a caffeine injection
would do him good. He could justify that. Its lights called to him.
He could see the signs offering fuel, fast food, fresh-filtered
coffee. He liked such places; large railways and airports were
particularly good too, especially in and around London. They
granted him company while allowing him to maintain his anonymity.
He was able to sit among people. Sometimes they glanced at his face
and moved away, but usually they ignored him and he'd be able to
sit close enough to smell their deodorants and perfumes, to hear
their gloriously dull conversations, to feel the warmth from their
bodies.