Nightsiders, p.1
Nightsiders, page 1
First Edition
Nightsiders © 2013 by Gary McMahon
All Rights Reserved.
A DarkFuse Release
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Dedicated to the angry, the helpless, and those who are unable to fight for themselves.
Thanks to Greg Gifune for approaching me to submit something, and to Dave Thomas for coming up with a great title change. And, as always, thanks to my wife and son for being a constant inspiration.
A man’s home is his castle.
—Old English folk saying
FRIDAY
3:30 A.M.
The boy watched the wounded kitten as it struggled gamely through the undergrowth at the bottom of the garden, then followed patiently on all fours. He paused for a moment to lick the blood from his fingers. It tasted good, like the memory of something special on his tongue. He had not eaten properly in days—his thin, undernourished body was testament to that—and any food, even this meagre feast, was to be savored.
The girl sat on the porch, her legs swinging as she rocked back and forth, back and forth in the wicker rocker, watching the boy; enjoying the hunt. She turned toward the house, to the powdery light that filtered through the wooden shutters—one of which had been destroyed when the boy had first grabbed the kitten—and smiled. On her thin, pale face, the expression looked venal.
The man and woman were inside, doing things on the kitchen floor. Noisy things. Soft and hard and ugly-moist things the girl didn’t really like to see but couldn’t stop herself from watching whenever the opportunity presented itself. She was interested in a way that made her feel detached, and it set her apart from the others. The man often told her she was too sharp for her own good, but that only made the girl think of a knife blade. And of cutting.
The other boy—the older one who was almost a man—was in there now, watching, and waiting his turn with the woman. Images of what they were doing flashed across a couple of large wall-mounted TV screens. The screens were broken and splashed with paint, but the girl could still make out the action.
The boy capered across the lawn like an animal, pushing through the wiry bushes and out into the clearing beyond the large garden, then along the narrow stream that bordered the length of the property before diverting into a small stone culvert and disappearing underground. Deep underground, where the darkness dwelled and secrets were always hidden.
The boy smiled. His teeth were crooked, and some of them were stained yellow and diseased. His gums were red, even beneath the layer of fresh kitten blood.
He crept up on the animal as it licked its gashed leg. He’d done that with his hands, his long, untrimmed fingernails. Later, he would be forced to take a bath, and then be preened and tidied like a show horse, but for now he could run like a beast.
The cat made a single sound when he grabbed it by the scruff of the neck, his fingers nipping the soft, warm flesh and the soft, warm fur that covered the soft, warm meat.
Soft, warm things were his favorites to play with.
With a flick of his other wrist, the animal’s neck was broken. The cracking-snapping sound it made was clearly audible in the still night, the natural quiet of the countryside this far out of town allowing the sound to travel back to the porch, where the girl sat and giggled.
“Leave me some,” she said. Her voice was low and hoarse, not at all like the unsure tones one might expect to hear coming from the mouth of a small prepubescent girl.
The boy licked his lips before digging in, tearing away the soft bulge of the kitten’s throat and chewing the tender flesh. He swallowed. The taste was…he couldn’t find the right word; his vocabulary was limited, his education negligible after being brought up on the road by the man and the woman.
But his heart responded to the calling of the blood, the sensation of it dripping down across his lips and staining his chin. Oh yes, the words might fail him but the actions were always there, like a second nature, an ancient instinct that had been relearned at some point during his short lifespan.
He stopped short of stripping the flesh from the bone; he saved the rest for the girl. Gripping the dead kitten between his teeth, its wet fur tickling his lips, he walked upright through the low gate and back into the garden. The girl was waiting for him, standing in a wash of yellow light that spilled from the kitchen window in long, thin strips. The man and the woman made moaning sounds from within, their cries rising in pitch and frequency. The older boy laughed.
The small boy held out his kill. The girl reached for it, her hands caressing his wrist. Then she took the fresh meat and retreated to a corner of the porch, where she slid down into a low crouch.
The sound she made while feeding was quite beautiful. It was music to the boy’s ears.
SUNDAY
10:30 A.M.
Robert Mitchell was stressed.
He’d known all along it would happen; this response had always been inevitable. After a fortnight spent camping in the Lake District, the entire family relaxed and at ease with the world, he would have bet his bottom dollar that the first sniff of reality, of so-called civilisation, would set his triggers twitching.
And here it was; the absolute proof of his prognosis.
Twenty-five miles outside Battle, the town whose outskirts they’d moved to only three weeks ago (bad timing considering the planned holiday, but Robert had managed to get a good deal at a property auction), and civilisation had returned with a vengeance to bite him in the arse. He’d been idling along at a steady thirty miles per hour, obeying the speed signs and still sustaining a reasonable mood from the holiday, when some prick in a four-wheel-drive Jeep had cruised up behind him, getting closer to his rear bumper and generally making it obvious he wanted to overtake.
The road was narrow, only wide enough for a single vehicle, and there were no passing points in sight. So Robert had carried on at the same steady speed, glancing in the rearview mirror and catching sight of some fat man scowling through his windscreen, his broad tattooed arm and dimpled elbow sticking out of the open side window.
Then the fat man edged even farther forward, his wide, black, mud-spattered front end nudging the rear of Robert’s ten-year-old Volvo Estate…gently, gently, and without causing any damage, but nudging it all the same.
Robert glanced again into the rearview mirror, his mouth becoming dry and his eyes watering. The fat man was wearing a pair of mirror-lens aviator sunglasses; his shiny jowls were cleanly shaven, his hair cut short, like an American army crew cut. His mouth was carved into a thin smile, bright white teeth showing like little fangs.
Robert’s hands tightened their grip on the steering wheel. The man’s very presence was threatening, but in a quiet, understated way. Not like the idiots in the city, where Robert and his family used to live. Not like…like him. The one who’d changed everything; the bastard whose lean, creased face Robert saw behind him, leering over his shoulder, every time he looked into a mirror.
No. No. Not like him. Not this one.
“What’s wrong?”
Robert glanced at Sarah, unable for the moment to speak, to grunt, to communicate in any way. He forced a smile. Then, finally, his voice returned. “Nothing, love. Just this moron sitting up my backside. He’s, you know—he’s getting on my nerves.”
Sarah’s eyes flickered to the mirror in the sun visor; only moments earlier she’d been putting on lipstick, so the visor was down, despite the fact that the sun was not strong enough to warrant the protection.
“It’s nothing.” As soon as he said this, Robert tasted the lie. It was like a particularly strong spice on his tongue; unpleasant and lingering.
“Just speed up and he’ll soon get bored,” said Sarah, not sounding too convinced by her own rationale.
“What’s up, Dad?” Molly’s voice was still thick with tiredness from the early morning start; she must have taken out her omnipresent earphones, perhaps sensing the tension inside the car.
“It’s okay, Moll. We’re almost there.” Robert craned his neck to smile at the girl. She shrugged, stuck the earphones back in, and went vacant, like any other fourteen-year-old on a long, dull car journey.
Beside her, Connor did not even look up from his PSP. His eyes were wide yet lacking any kind of lustre beyond that reflected from the handheld console. It was a look that often reminded Robert of movie zombies, or the roadkill he sometimes saw flattened on the road.
The sound of a horn blaring pulled his attention back toward the road, then the mirror. The fat man was gesticulating, waving his stubby fingers in a sideways motion.
“He wants me to pull over,” he said, not taking his eyes off the man.
“Fuck him,” said Sarah. “Fuck. Him. He doesn’t own the road.”
Robert tore his gaze away from the mirror and stared at his wife. Sometimes she surprised him by reacting like this. Back in the city, before…before what had happened, she had been calm and collected, timid even. But now, after everything she had gone through, Sarah occasionally slipped into another mode, becoming someone Robert only thought he knew. A different version of his wife: an upgrade.
Robert’s foot pressed down onto the accelerator; in the rearview mirror, th e man and his four-wheel-drive receded slightly, slipping back into the dust rising from the road like a light mist. Then he caught himself, and lifted his foot off the pedal. Adrenaline was coursing through his system, but instead of energising him it simply made him shake. Something hard and warm rose in his throat. Robert wanted to puke.
He turned the steering wheel and pulled the Volvo into a passing point, allowing the other vehicle to overtake. The horn blared a second time; the fat man turned to look at Robert. He was smiling. He had won the battle with ease.
“I’m sorry.” His hands were shaking on the wheel.
“For what?” asked Sarah. But she knew; oh yes, she knew. His weakness was there for all to see, and not for the first time.
Sarah reached out and turned on the radio; an old Beatles tune was just ending. She sat and waited for Robert to compose himself, listening to the DJ as he introduced a guest, some psychology professor who was plugging his new book.
Robert began to breathe more easily. He indicated, and pulled back out into the road. He could still see the dust created by the speeding fat man, and to him it looked like some kind of monster from a cheesy B-movie.
He listened to the talking heads on the radio, trying to rid himself of whatever nameless horror was stirring inside his heart, and to take his mind off the memories bubbling slowly to the surface—grim, bitter recollections of their final weeks in the city.
“In today’s all-consuming culture of corruption there is nowhere left to hide. Our homes have already been invaded by this insidious enemy that seeks to twist our minds and poison our hearts through the unmonitored Internet, television, magazines, and music our families ingest on a daily basis.”
The pompous professor was giving a brief synopsis of his book, some cheapjack volume of popular psychology. Robert changed the channel, and was relieved when he found an old, familiar refrain: Nina Simone singing about the “Backlash Blues.”
But for some reason he could not get the words from the radio out of his mind. They were haunting him, or taunting him. He could not be sure which.
Our homes have already been invaded by this insidious enemy that seeks to twist our minds and poison our hearts.
Jesus, why was that staying with him? The phrase was stuck in his brain, like an insect trapped in a jar, constantly beating itself against the glass until it went insane. He knew it was linked to the bad times they’d all gone through, but he also knew he should not allow those memories to hold such power over him.
Robert stared at the road ahead. He was alone, so horribly, terribly alone, despite the presence of his family inside the car. The moment soon passed, but it left behind an emotional residue—a stain—he could not remove however hard he tried.
Even among loved ones, he thought, we are entirely on our own.
“So,” he said, mainly to shift his own dark mood. “Are we all looking forward to getting back to the new house? Settling in, unpacking properly this time, and starting things again?” He wished he had kept quiet. The words he had used, and the way he’d said them, were linked directly to the memories he was trying to keep down.
“Yeah,” said Molly. “It should be fun. Apart from the new school.” She made a puking noise. Beside her, Connor laughed, finally looking up from his game.
“Oh, come on, you two. Dad’s done us proud with this place. I know we didn’t get the chance to get settled in before the trip, but now we can make our mark on the house, make it a real home. There’s still a long time left of the summer holidays, and we can forget about school until then. In the meantime, let’s all just dive into this new adventure and start being a family again.” Despite her surface optimism, Robert knew Sarah’s eyes betrayed how she really felt. She was clearly afraid: of the new life they were planning, of the strange territory represented by the new house and the countryside…of everything.
“Yes, that’s what we want to hear: some positivity.” His own voice held a note of trepidation. Why couldn’t they all just admit they were scared and be done with it? Was it so difficult to open yourself up and show your weaknesses, even to the ones closest to you?
They all went quiet, as if in recognition of their unspoken fears, and Robert stared through the windscreen as if he had never seen a road before. The trees moved slowly, their tops shifting like nodding heads in a slight breeze, and leaves clutched like fingers at the air. Daylight pierced the spaces between those leaves, creating bright spots in the dark treetops. He saw a rabbit racing along the verge, head down, ears pinned back, and he smiled sadly as it veered off into a clump of bushes. The sun hung in the sky as if it were painted on; its glare was unbearable when he looked directly at it, but when viewed askance the yellow blob seemed to become more solid.
Sarah’s hand strayed to touch his knee. Her long fingers clasped him, lightly but with enough pressure to let him know she meant it.
It’s going to be all right, he thought. Everything will be fine.
Before long the battered road sign for the small town of Battle came into view. It was scraped and scratched; someone had daubed meaningless black lines across it in either paint or marker pen. Battle was more like a village than a town, with a few shops, two pubs and a sub-post office counter at the rear of a newsagent. It was exactly the kind of place they needed to heal their wounds; a quiet, almost lazy backwater where everyone knew everyone else’s business but nobody really bothered to interfere.
More importantly, it was a million miles away from the city—if not figuratively, then at least metaphorically. Things moved slower in the country; the people cared little about your past, and even less about your present. He and his family could be outsiders, and now they would relish that sense of alienation. It was a different type of segregation to that found in the city, and one they could use to their advantage.
He began to recognize small sights and markers: a length of tumbledown stone wall, a sign for a farm selling fresh eggs and other produce, a drainage ditch that ran under the road but did not reappear at the opposite side. Soon, he knew, would appear the access road to the house. He was surprised at how quickly, and how deeply, it was starting to feel like home.
“Nearly there now,” he said, waiting for the road to lurch toward them around the next bend. He slowed the car, taking the curve smoothly, and bumped over the slight raised area at the side of the carriageway before shifting down a gear to take the access road.
The road climbed slowly, and if he was honest, it was barely a road at all, more of a dirt track upon which someone had thrown some wood shavings to absorb the surface water. The Volvo’s engine whined a little, but managed the steep climb with ease, and within less than a minute the car was cresting the rise and the house leapt up to meet them.
“I forgot how nice it is,” said Sarah.
“Yeah,” agreed Molly. “It is. It really is.”
Even Connor managed a muted response from somewhere at the back of his throat.
“Whose car is that?” Robert was suddenly wary. They were expecting no visitors, and not even his solicitor knew the exact date of their return from the camping trip.
“Is it the estate agent?” Sarah sounded hopeful, too hopeful, as if she were pleading with him to affirm her query.
It was an old car—a Ford Cortina—with mud caking the tyres and the wings, and deep grazes in the front bumper. The windscreen was tinted, and even from this distance Robert could see it was coated in a layer of dirt and dead insects, with tracks cut through the mess by the windscreen wipers. It was a dirty car, a vehicle that did not look cared for or well-maintained. The dirt ran deeper than the bodywork. He was certain whoever drove this vehicle was nobody he knew, or wanted to know.
He pulled up on the wide gravel drive, setting the handbrake and turning off the engine. He shifted his gaze from the filthy car to the house, and noted the curtains and blinds were all open. He had pulled them all shut before locking up the place; he was as sure of this as he was of the fact that there had been no car in the drive when they left for their trip.
