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First published in Great Britain and the USA 2014 by
SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of
19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA

eBook edition first published in 2014 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

The right of Declan Hughes to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Hughes, Declan, 1963â

All the things you are.

1. Suspense fiction.

I. Title

823.9'2-dc23

ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8371-1 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-506-3 (trade paper)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-516-1 (ePub)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This eBook produced by
Palimpsest Book Production Limited,
Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

To Patricia Lucey

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to a number of people who helped me in a variety of ways while I was writing this book. In Madison, Patricia Lucey, Michael Lucey and Tom Colby. In Chicago, Theresa Schwegel and Kevin Lambert. In Dublin and London, Sheila Crowley, John Connolly, Diarmuid O'Hegarty, Alan Glynn and Jessica O'Leary. At home, Kathy, Isobel and Heather.

Out of Nowhere

Sunday, October 23

D
anny Brogan burned his future wife's family to death when he was eleven years old. Whether by accident or design, he's not entirely sure, or at least that's what he's always told himself. It was probably no great surprise that as a result he should develop a morbid fear of fire, nor that this fear should stay with him throughout his life. Fear is a man's best friend, or so the song goes, and Danny carried his fear of fire, just as he carried his fear of the friends that were with him that night, until it sometimes looked like the twin burdens might overwhelm him.

No one really knew what he had done except his friends Dave and Gene and Ralph, and even they differed on the details, and while they had all promised never to tell, there was always the fear that they might. Not at first, not in the immediate aftermath, the whole city in shock, the church services and processions of mourning, the burial of the dead, the tiny white coffins. Not in the following weeks and months, the surviving child placed in foster care and then with adoptive parents miles away, the burnt-out house demolished and rebuilt until you'd never know there'd been a fire there at all. Not in the years after that, as junior high gave way to the high-school riot of sports and studies and hormones, Brains, Emotions and Muscles vying daily for supremacy, like in the old comic book advertisement. No one ever said a word. It was as if it had never happened, as if their
childhoods
had never happened, as if memory was no longer necessary. The future was the only game in town: the next exam, the next football game, the next pretty girl. Who cared what happened when they were kids?

It was only later, when they had kids themselves, that things changed. You relive your own childhood when you have children, Danny came to understand. Danny's elder daughter, Barbara, was the same age now as Danny had been when the fire took place. And once the kids had started coming, that was when the memories began, that was when the questions started, that was when the past became present. And for Danny, that was when the fear took renewed,
redoubled
hold. That the guys had all drifted apart was perhaps inevitable. After all, how many eleven-year-olds remain friends for the rest of their lives? But it increasingly seemed (even if it was never spoken of) as if the fire at the Bradberry place was the only thing they had left in common.

But Danny Brogan refused to let his fears overwhelm him. He met his fear of fire head on, spouting and sputtering from the gas burners in the kitchen of the bar and grill he owned and ran. And when the season was right and his family clamored for barbecue, Danny met his fear there also, even though the reek of burning charcoal and seared meat sometimes infused his brain with visions and sense memories all the more insidious for being imaginary (for Danny was out cold before the Bradberry fire took hold and had little real recollection of it). They didn't cook out nearly as often as other families, Danny's excuse being that it was too much like bringing his work home with him. But the family barbecue can't be avoided altogether.

And here it is, the last of the season, on a clear and bright October day, the leaves turning, the air still mild but with a bite, a cold admonitory finger warning of frost, and more, to come. Halloween's just a week away now. The lanterns have been lit and the pumpkins carved. In the windows hang curtains of black net, watermarked with spiders and skulls and witches in flight. And everyone's here, in the rolling backyard, vampires, werewolves, spooks and ghouls, and their kids, and their dogs. Everyone's here. The turn of the year. The harsh Wisconsin winter looming, but for now, the air still mild, just, as fall's cold blaze flickers along the apple trees heavy with fruit at the foot of the garden and out across the wall and spreads like, yes, like wild fire through the forests of the neighboring Arboretum.

As the afternoon wears on, and the beers take hold (cocktails for Danny and his noisier friends, brandy Old Fashioneds, the local favorite), as the flames twist and turn, wrestling with the shimmering light, as the charcoal smoke stains the haze inky black, reality seems momentarily suspended. Talk gets heated, wild and reckless, painted cheeks flush and masked eyes glitter, and fleetingly, anything seems possible: someone else's wife, someone else's life! All are called to the masquerade! Louder music, wilder women, stronger wine!

And speaking of wilder women, there goes Karen Cassidy, Danny's indispensable chief bartender, teetering about on six-inch heels, part of a customized Catwoman costume that sees her blonde hair lacquered and coiffed into two pointy kitty ears, the heels-and-ears combination hauling her five feet in height perilously close to six. Day-to-day, Karen (apart from dressing like a finalist in a Dolly Parton lookalike contest) is dependably level-headed and smart, not to mention hard as nails, but once she's had a drink, or in this case, five brandy Old Fashioneds and half a bottle of chardonnay, well, there she goes! Danny once had to shut himself in the janitor's closet at a staff party because Karen wouldn't take no for an answer (she never remembers anything the following day, and woe betide anyone who challenges her).

Karen demands that eleven-year-old Barbara put âHighway to Hell' by AC/DC on the sound system at full volume, that it be turned up to eleven, and that everyone dance to it out on the deck, no stop-outs or dissenters. Having had her eye for a good hour or more on one of Claire's theater friends, Simon, who is dapper and handsome and charming and dressed in a (big clue this) sailor suit, there she goes, big time, her Catwoman tail shaking, her arms around his neck, his face snug in her cleavage, and there they go together, stumbling off the deck and toppling into the herb garden, and there they lie, thrashing among bushes and low trees, bruised in thyme and sage and bay. âThat's what I call a
bouquet garni
,' Simon's boyfriend, Todd, says.

It's then that Danny sees it. Flames have erupted suddenly from the barbecue, hot fat crackles and spits, and Danny has turned away from the commotion, away from the house. As he rakes the embers and banks down the fire, it's then that Danny sees â through the smoke, through the apple trees, through the wrought-iron bars of the old garden gate that leads to the Arboretum â the unmistakeable figure of Death. The Angel of Death in his black cowl, faceless and strange, scythe in one hand, the other raised in greeting, or rebuke, and then lowered to try the handle of the gate. For a split second, through the smoke, through the trees, Danny thinks it
is
Death, come to claim him. Then he sees the letter
P
scrawled on Death's chest â
P
for Pestilence,
P
for Plague â and he realizes it must be one of his old friends: Dave Ricks, or Gene Peterson, or Ralph Cowley. The Four Horsemen, that's what they were, or at least, that's what they became, the Halloween they were eleven years old, the Halloween that changed everything. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

It's then that Danny leaves the party and walks down past the apple trees to the gate, to his old friend, unseen, he thinks, by everyone. He's only gone a couple of steps when he stops and turns back to the fire. Through the haze he sees his wife, Claire, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes as Simon struggles vainly to free himself from Karen's horizontal attentions, and Barbara, pulling cartoon faces to indicate her embarrassment and disbelief, but unable quite to hide her excitement, and eight-year-old Irene, who is making her own fun, rolling around on the lawn with Mr Smith, the Brogans' springer spaniel. He sees his family. This is what is at stake, he thinks, this is what he could not bear to lose, and he stows the eight-inch Sabatier knife he used to carve the meat deep in the pocket of his butcher's apron. He turns and walks down through the drifting smoke, through the falling light, beneath the aching branches of the apple trees to the old gate, unobserved, or so he thinks, and out into the Arboretum to meet the Angel of Death, who knows everything Danny wishes he could forget.

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