The Midnight Men and Other Stories (12 page)

“Oh, yes, I forgot,” she said, touching his hand affectionately. “Silly me.”

They descended into a deep, swollen silence. The old woman smoothed down her bed sheets noisily. Steven’s eyes shifted to the nurse’s station visible through the open door. She followed his gaze.

“Aren’t you at least going to shut the door, Stevie? They’re bound to hear the shot.”

He shrugged. “What does it matter?” he said. “I don’t expect to get away, Nan. In fact, when this hits the papers, they’ll probably crusade to bring back hanging just for me.”

She wrinkled her brow with real concern. “I hope not, dear. Hanging’s a terrible way to go. I should know. Happened to me back in the 1600s. That Witch-finder General, he was a bastard. Sexy as hell, but a real bastard.”

“Nan,” said Steve raising the gun to her temple. “Enough now.”

She noticed the slight tremor in his hand, and sighed. “Stevie, is there anything I can say that will make you change your mind about this?”

He shook his head. Although his face was set like stone, a single tear spilled down his cheek. “I love you, Nan.”

“I’m sorry it’s come to this,” she said. “You were a good grandson.”

A distant alarm bell began ringing somewhere deep in his head, brought on no doubt, by her use of the past tense . . .

Before he could act, the shrunken, wrinkled features of his dear old Nan transformed into a snarling mask. The puckered little mouth with too much lipstick became a dripping, gaping maw, with needle-sharp teeth the size of bayonet blades. Oversized jaws clamped down on his arm just above the elbow, sending a spray of blood across his neck and face. He tried to scream but shock had frozen his vocal chords. Amidst all the confusion, he realised that his gun hand was deep inside the throat of this monstrosity. His brain ordered his fingers to pull the trigger, but nothing happened, and he realised with grim understanding that his arm had been sliced through at the elbow, that his arm was no longer attached to him. The monster in the bed gulped down the arm and snapped for more. The bloody mouth closed over his head and left shoulder, pulling him from the chair and onto the bed. Finding himself in the throat of the beast, Steve finally found his voice and began to scream. But it was too late for that now. No one would hear it.

When the last of her grandson had slid down her bulging throat, the old woman’s features returned to their normal, serene state. She gave a sudden, hacking cough, and a single bullet dropped from her lips onto the bed sheets.

The holy bullet. God, that would have given her a bad gut for days…

“Are you all right, Olive?”

The young care assistant leaned in through the open door with a concerned expression. The old woman remained icily composed at this unexpected confusion, moving only to pull the bed sheets up over the mess of blood in her lap.

“Oh, I’m fine, Lucy,” she said. “Just a little wind.”

The girl approached the bed. “Has your grandson left?” she said. “I never saw him go.”

“He’s shy,” the old woman told her. “Probably slipped right by you.”

The girl smiled, but her shrug suggested that she really couldn’t care less. “It’s very stuffy in here, Olive. Shall I open the window?”

“Yes, dear, some fresh air would be good.”

The girl opened the upper window and then paused for a moment, looking out into the gathering dusk. “The weathermen say there’s a storm on its way, Olive. A big one.”

The old woman nodded solemnly, her eyes staring into some black abyss. “Yes, dear. There’s a storm coming all right. And there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it now . . .”

Travis discovered his latent power on the day his brother left for America.

Carl had been offered a job with a special effects company in Los Angeles, six months on a big-budget horror movie, doing mostly latex work which was his field of expertise. It was big bucks, but more than that, it was the first step on the road to a brilliant career.

On the afternoon before his flight, they’d all gathered at Mum and Dad’s house, sharing a couple of beers and a joke before Carl set off for Heathrow. The atmosphere was good, and Travis could see how excited Carl was.

Then it happened, just as they were all saying goodbye.

Carl came across the living room and threw his big muscled arms around his little brother, lifting Travis off the ground in one of his ritual bear hugs. When he put Travis down and stepped back, Travis expected to see his brother’s broad features smiling back at him.

Instead, he found himself staring into a Death’s Head.

Carl’s face was gone - the skin, muscle tissue and blood vessels stripped away, leaving a grim, eyeless skull. A halo of blue and green flame encircled the upper part of the cranium. In the smoking eye sockets, two tiny red points of light glimmered. Somewhere in Travis’s head, he could hear the distant roar of a jet engine.

Carl must have spoken, as the lower jaw began to move in a jerky fashion. It reminded Travis of the amusing stop-motion animation films Carl had made on his very first super-8 movie camera. But there was nothing funny about this. Travis simply stared into the hollow eye sockets of this ghastly vision, his limbs filled with ice water, his mind reeling.

“Don’t look so worried,” he heard his brother say, a ghostly voice from some distant land. “I’ll be fine.”

In a blink, the vision vanished. Carl’s broad, handsome features reappeared. Oblivious to anything out of the ordinary, Carl skipped over to his mother and father and embraced them both. Travis watched them, numb, detached, paralysed with shock.

Had he imagined that?

Was he losing his mind?

But something deep inside told him the vision was real - at least, it was meant to be seen. And by Travis in particular. Nausea flooded through him as his brother began to gather his bags.

He had to say something. He had to say it now.

“Carl?”

Carl paused at the front door, his parents behind him. Slowly, all three turned to look at Travis, who was sweating and trembling at the far end of the hall. Their broad grins began to wane at the sight of such a miserable wretch.

“What’s up, Travis?” Carl said.

Travis took a stumbling step forward. “Carl, don’t go.”

“What?” said Carl, stifling a laugh.

“You can’t go,” Travis told him, the words devoid of any power. “I don’t want you to.”

“Travis,” said Carl, “I have to go. The flight leaves at six.”

“The plane,” Travis said. “There’s something wrong with the plane.”

The look of bemused pity left Carl’s face, and irritation appeared. “How do you know that, Travis? You’re just being paranoid.”

Carl shook his head and then stepped out the front door. A white-hot pain burned in Travis’s chest. He stumbled after his parents into the driveway.

“Carl!” he shouted. “If you love me, you won’t go.”

Carl turned back and looked at his brother, an angry frown darkening his features. “Travis, I can’t believe you’re doing this,” he said.

His parents looked totally perplexed by his behaviour.

“Travis,” his mother said, “you know how much this means to your brother. Don’t spoil it for him.”

“Yes, Travis,” his father said, “what’s got into you?”

“He’s jealous, that’s what,” Carl seethed, throwing his bags into the boot of his car. “Same old Travis.”

Travis shook his head, desperate to explain himself, but he knew with a depressing certainty that he never could. He watched his big brother climb into his Ford Fiesta, kiss his mother goodbye through the open driver’s window, and offer his dad a big thumbs-up. As he started the engine, Carl viewed Travis in the rear-view mirror and shook his head before driving away. Mum and Dad waved until the car was out of sight. Then, as they made their way back into the house, they regarded Travis with exasperation. They didn’t say anything, and Travis made no effort to apologise. After they’d gone inside, Travis sat on the front doorstep and cried until his tears dried up.

He didn’t sleep that night.

He lay in his bed staring at the ceiling.

Waiting . . .

At two o’clock in the morning, the phone rang, shattering the silence of the house like a klaxon. Travis didn’t move. He had expected this. He heard his father stumbling about in the bedroom, looking for his slippers, his dressing gown. Then he heard him plodding down the stairs and into the living room. The ringing stopped abruptly when his father picked up the receiver.

“Hello?”

Silence.

“Yes, this is he. What-”

More silence. The worst silence of all.

“Oh, dear God.”

Travis heard his mother appear on the landing, the banister creaking as she leaned over. “Jim, what is it?”

To the person on the phone he was saying: “Oh, dear sweet Jesus, no.”

“Jim!” Mum was screaming now. “What’s happening?”

But a part of her already knew the answer.

That was why she was screaming.

***

After the loss of his brother, Travis’s ability lay dormant for four years.

It came back just as Travis was beginning to think it was a one-off aberration.

It came back big time.

He was studying Media at Exeter Royal University when it happened again. After Carl’s death, Travis began to feel an unspoken pressure to somehow try and fill the huge vacuum that Carl’s absence had left in the family. Believing himself to be the worst student ever inflicted upon a campus, Travis was amazed to find himself in the final year of his degree, and getting some pretty tidy grades to boot. By then he was able to stop telling himself he was doing it for his parents. He was enjoying it.

Just before Easter break, there was a great deal of excitement on the Exeter Royal campus when it was announced that a very special speaker was coming to the University. Leroy Defoe was a peace protester from the States who had risen to public attention over the past few years for getting arrested a record number of times. The Establishment regarded him as a menace, but students got his vibe—the dude was telling the
truth
. Leroy Defoe was already being spoken of in the same breath as Martin Luther King—hell, even Gandhi. And he was young, not some old guy telling the young kids how to get happy. With his head of dreads and gangsta rapper dress-style, he was down with the kids and no politician in the world could compete with that. To anyone under twenty-one, Leroy Defoe was a god.

“He’s coming here?” Travis said.

“Yeah, tomorrow morning,” said Shelley, his roommate. “It’s all last minute. Leroy doesn’t like to advertise when or where he’s gonna be next. You understand?”

“Of course. Are you going?”

“You bet your ass!” said Shelley, changing her t-shirt behind the bathroom door. Travis didn’t know why she was being so coy. Most of the time she walked around their shared quarters either topless or completely starkers, behaviour which she obviously felt comfortable with - and he wasn’t complaining about it, either. If it hadn’t been for her long-term boyfriend, Jed, (a rather bullish lorry driver who she was fiercely loyal to) he would probably have tried it on with her a long time ago. She stepped back into the room in a tight crop top, and struck a provocative pose.

“What d’you think?” she said.

Travis looked up from his course books and offered her a pantomime leer.

“Perv,” she said, but her smile told him that she was pleased by his reaction. “Are you going to come with me tomorrow, then?” she said. “We can go together.”

“I’ll think about it,” he said, feigning indifference.

“Okay,” she said. “But if you do come, don’t bring any weed with you. Tomorrow morning, this place is gonna be crawling with cops.”

***

Shelley was pretty good at predictions. By 9am the next morning, the campus was awash with Devon and Cornwall Constabulary. As the students went about their morning routines, there was a good deal of taunting from some of the idiots on campus, and two students got arrested before Defoe even arrived.

When Shelley found Travis preparing his books for the morning lectures she told him he was a certified loon.

“Travis!” she said. “How could you even contemplate going to some boring old lecture about Truffaut when Leroy Defoe is visiting the campus?”

Travis stared back humourlessly. “I made a promise three years ago,” he said, feeling heat rise in his cheeks. “To my brother. To myself.”

Her features softened. “Missing one lecture won’t hurt, dummy! Now, come on.”

As she dragged him out of the halls of residence and down the slope to join the heaving mass of students lining the route, Travis tried to explain to her Truffaut’s innovative use of jump-cutting in Jules et Jim, but her attention was fixed on the parade of big black American cars gliding up the winding road.

“Come on,” said Shelley. “Let’s get to the front of the queue. I wanna shake the guy’s hand.”

Shelley muscled her way through the throng and Travis rode along in her wake until the two of them were clutching one of the parade barriers and cheering like delirious pop fans. The leading black Sedan came to a stop and an army of African-American security men climbed out. They checked everything from behind their gleaming sunglasses, before allowing Defoe to step into view. The noise of the crowd reached fever pitch, chanting his name at the top of their lungs.

Leroy Defoe! Leroy Defoe! Leroy Defoe!

The big man greeted the crowds with a grin and then started moving along the barriers, clutching the sea of hands and flashing the peace sign.

“Peace is power!” he was shouting. “Are you at peace with yourself?”

People were holding out things to sign, but the security guards urged Defoe on. Travis was caught up in the delirium. His heart was beating faster as Defoe came up to Shelley who was screaming his name louder than all the rest.

When he paused in front of them, Shelley cried out, “Leroy! Like my t-shirt?” And then she lifted it up to reveal her bare breasts. Leroy let out a whoop. Shelley offered him a marker pen. “Sign me!” she yelled.

Leroy looked at the chief security guy who gave a curt nod. Leroy smiled, took the marker pen and signed his name on Shelley’s left breast. When he’d finished, she grabbed both sides of his face and kissed him full on the lips. The security men jumped in immediately and yanked her off. Travis held out his hand to try and get one last handshake. Their palms had barely touched when—