Rottenhouse (35 page)

The old man shook his head. ‘You really
don’t get it, doya, Simon. Go back to Rowling’s, take a breath, and
think about it. We aint got her.’

Halfway across Simon stopped. But the
river didn’t.

‘
How do you know my
name?’

‘
I know everything
that goes on here.’ And with a crooked grin that looked like Bob on
a really bad day he added, ‘Everything, Simon. From the lake to the
village, I see and hear all, Simon. Even what goes on down in that
shitty little Working Man’s Club they all like to go to and talk
about and drink and fiddle with their pricks.’

‘
I don’t care.’ Simon
said but he did care and what the old man said stayed with
him.

‘
Best you do start
caring, Simon. Now mark my words, one more step and you’ll be
sorry.’

This old man wasn’t going to budge.

‘
We haven’t got her,
son. They have.’

‘
Whose they?’ But he
knew who they were.

And just as Simon started to believe
the old man was right, that perhaps Lucy wasn’t here and that maybe
they hadn’t taken her at all and he was being deceived, a woman’s
scream, long and hard and coarse, ripped through the air, and it
came from somewhere in the house and it made Simon take more than
one step forward, he took many running steps straight at the old
man with his axe raised and his heart full of rage matching the
river that growled beneath his feet.

But even rivers have to yield
sometimes.

8

Simon leapt forward, hell bent on
putting the axe into what ever happened to be in its way as it
sliced through the air. His screams faded into nothing. The old man
on the other side of the bridge looked surprised but then that
surprise faded and he leapt forward too, quicker than you would
have thought for such a man of his age, and his baggy jeans flapped
in the breeze his speed created and his grey beard floated
effortlessly like a woman’s radiant hair. The two men matched
strides, getting closer with every second. Left foot then right
foot. Boards beneath their feet creaked and groaned and moaned and
the river roared and the wind roared in both their ears. Finally
Simon believed he was in cutting distance and he swung the axe
bearing all his strength behind it. The axe missed by a good 2 feet
and as the old man came to a sudden stop the momentum of the axe
twisted Simon full circle and he spun like a dumb ballerina and
when he had finished his dance the momentum made him fall to the
floor and he sat there like a toddler; legs out straight, back
against the handrail. He still held the axe though.

The old man drew a small knife and that
knife looked nasty. He leaned over, still out of reach of the axe
but close enough so that Simon could see the glint in his eye and
the blackheads dug deep in his old pores. He stunk like shit. But
it was the little knife that got Simons full attention. It had a
handle of dirty ivory and the metal blade, only 5 inches long, was
serrated and dull. There was a little bit of red ribbon tied around
the hilt.

‘
Fell on yer arse did
ya! Ha! Now I’m gonna cut yathroat, just a nick so that yableed out
slow and then I’m gonna toss yainto that river below and watch you
float away.’

Simon pushed himself back but he had
nowhere to go. This was where it was going to end he supposed, here
on this dirty old bridge in a place he didn’t know surrounded by
nobody that loved him. He looked to the house and cried out Lucy’s
name just so that she knew he was there and he had tried.

The old man laughed and shook his head.
‘She aint there, son. But don’t matter no more.’

‘
What’s your name?’
Simon asked sighing.

‘
Lud.’ And the knife
flicked out and Simon closed his eyes waiting for the pain. He
winced sure that he felt something on his neck and at the same time
there was a cracking sound; a braking sound much like when you snap
a piece of wood with your foot when its propped up against the wall
and a second or two passed, maybe more and whatever Lud had planned
to do hadn’t happened and so Simon opened his eyes, slowly, very
slowly, and saw that the old man was down on his right knee,
kneeling but not kneeling as Simon saw that the lower half of his
leg had broken through one of the boards and was pinned there. Lud
gave a cry and dropped the knife as he tried to free his leg. With
every tug it seemed as though a large wooden splinter dug deeper
just below Luds kneecap. The blue jeans around the area blossomed a
deep red colour. Simon scrambled to his feet and old Lud looked up
to him with eyes that were wet and a face full of pain and hate and
helplessness and the big man that he had changed into was gone and
he was a little old man again with a wispy beard and thin skin over
rotten bones. Even the knife didn’t look so terrifying; lying on
the old wood looking more like a child’s plaything compared to the
device of torture it had appeared to be not seconds
earlier.

‘
Ah, fuck it.’ Lud
spat and once again tried to retrieve his leg from the damaged
board. But it was no good and that little bit of splintered wood
dug in deeper.

‘
Now there’s my first
bit of good luck in a long time.’ Simon picked up the knife taking
care not to get too close to old man Lud for he could still be
dangerous.

Simon had two weapons but still not a
clue on what to do with such things. Life wasn’t a video game, not
a Hollywood movie. He had no script to go with or a director to
push him from scene to scene. This was all off the cuff.

‘
Give me a hand, would
yameboy? Help out old Lud.’

Simon felt the need to help him. So he
dug the knife into the handrail and was surprised to see it go
further into the wood than he had thought. He kept hold of the axe
though, after all, he wasn’t stupid. He reached down with his hand.
‘Now this is probably gonna, hurt, that bit of wood looks good and
stuck in.’

Lud took hold of Simon’s outstretched
hand with his own shaking maw. ‘Aye, son, its gonna hurt.’ And Lud
was back and with great strength Lud heaved Simon toward him,
keeping hold of his hand and then reaching out for Simon’s neck
with the other. Simon tried to pull away but it was doing no good.
It hadn’t occurred to him that he had another hand and in that
other hand was an axe, so he kept on being pulled toward the
spitting and drooling Lud and soon Luds hand was around his
shoulder and then up to his neck and there it stopped and dug in,
really dug in, and Simon screamed in pain, but that scream did no
good either, it seemed to spur on Lud even further and now that he
was close enough Lud let go of Simons hand and Simon had two hands
clasped round his neck and both were squeezing. Simon couldn’t
breathe. He tried to grab a breath but even opening his mouth was a
struggle he couldn’t win. His throat started to burn and ache and
then his legs started to buckle and his vision began to darken as
death loomed. Lud was panting. Lips pursed together and his cheeks
puffing in and out, in and out, in and out. Simons left knee
finally gave way; the blood and muscle starved of oxygen, and he
was now level with the old feller and Luds hands were unrelenting
and Simon closed his eyes for what he believed was going to be last
time. And as his eyes closed he could see Lucy, stood on the other
side of the bridge, and she was wearing that tight red dress and
she looked at him as she looked at him that night all those years
ago and he tried to say her name but it was no good and she shook
her head but he didn’t know why and then the world went black.

9

You have an axe, you
idiot
, Lucy told him.

She was right. He did have an axe. But
it was useless now that he was dead. Though he could still feel its
wooden handle, its weight in his hand was real, but that must be
some residue of his life that was now over that still swam in his
mind that wasn’t quiet dead.

Swing it ya bloody
fool!
Bob said.

And why not? Simon pondered as the
blackness got blacker and his mind started to drift. His neck hurt
and he could feel the weight of the axe and so he swung it, with
all his might because it took it all such was his distance from the
living now that he was in the land of the dead.

The first swing felt good, so he swung
it again and again and with each swing the weight of the axe got
greater and the blackness got brighter and his neck didn’t hurt as
much so he kept on going and going, breathing in and swing,
breathing out, breathing in and swing and breathing out, and then
brighter and less painful. Breathe in and swing. Breathe in and
swing until his eyes opened and the pain in Simon’s neck was
nothing but a memory and a yellowing bruise.

10

Simon felt numb, like he had just
awoken from a deep sleep.

Blood dripped from the axe in thick
gloopy wads and Simons hands were covered in it, so too were his
arms and his legs and his chest and his face, and by the taste of
it; so to his mouth. Simon took a great gulp of air and it hurt to
do so. He reached up and gently touched his throat and when he
touched the skin it stung and felt swollen. And then Simon looked
down to the very quiet old man that was slumped on the damp wooden
boards. Damp because they were drenched in blood, Luds blood, blood
that had poured out of his neck, a neck that was free of a head and
Simon could see white bone and flappy pipes hanging from that hole
that had been hacked by Simons axe.

Simon stood, his legs no longer
fragile. ‘JesusKrist. What the fuck have I done?’

There was another scream then and Simon
turned his attention from Lud to the house. It was a short muted
scream that sounded more like a roar that was being stifled than
the earlier shriek and now it really didn’t sound like Lucy. But
that didn’t seem important now. If Lucy were here then he would
save her, if she wasn’t, and Lud had been right, then he would move
on and he knew exactly where to go.

Simon hurdled the body and ran toward
the house leaving small bloody footprints in the dirt. In one hand
he carried the axe, in the other he carried the small knife. Behind
him was a headless body and underneath that headless body was a
river which carried on flowing much like Simon would carry on
killing until he found what he was looking for.

Honey

1

The house was built on a small hill.
The hill was a plateau of sorts with a few farm buildings scattered
about, but the main focal point was the house. The house was made
of wood, though Simon could see at its base a few layers of bricks
which acted as a foundation of sorts. There was a walkway going all
the way around the house which, when it was new, would have looked
splendid but now looked pathetic. It was a tall house, three
stories for the most part except for the right hand side which was
a single floor. The roof was tiled but half of it was missing and
had been repaired with sheets of tin that clung to it like plasters
on a deep cut. Simon guessed it had once been a barn then converted
into a house many years ago. It was once painted white but now was
the colour of old wet wood covered in moss and fungi. The Rotten
House was an apt description. There was no other way to describe it
and if Lud was anything to go by then the owners and occupiers of
this tragic place would be just as rotten.

He had been walking quickly but as he
approached the pig pens he slowed. The pigs paid him little
attention, like Lud had done when Simon had raised the axe in
anger; they snorted and grunted like they had been doing when Simon
had been on the bridge. The smell was strong; pig shit and spoiled
food. The pens themselves were simple objects; sheets of corrugated
iron dug into the earth and kept in place by wooden spikes hammered
through the corners. There must be thirty pigs milling around and
they were all fat and hairy and pink with splotches of brown.

The area seemed calm, though tingles in
his gut told him that a storm was coming. If the brothers and the
mother were around the back then he could sneak into the house and
try and find Lucy. From the size and layout of the house it
wouldn’t take long. There were a couple of barns dotted about but
they had no sides to them and Simon could see the horizon
uninterrupted. Inside these barns there were carcases of cars and
trucks and tractors and bits of metal and farm equipment.

Walking toward the house, dodging not
only the milling pigs but pig shit and rotten apples and other bits
of food, Simon saw that on the porch, leant against a rickety old
rocking chair, his second good piece of fortune; a gun.

2

Walking slowly and
carefully ssshing
the pigs as he went by
them, Simon walked up the small set of steps and onto the porch.
The old wood moaned softly and Simon placed the small knife onto
the porch floor and grabbed the gun. It was heavy, a shotgun with
sawn off barrels so they were barely a foot long each and it had a
dark coloured wooden butt and the thing looked old but useful and
Simon crept back down the stairs and sat with his back against the
raised porch and investigated the weapon. In the distance, still
slumped on the bridge was old man Lud. Simon questioned where his
head was, guessed it must have floated off down the river. Apart
from in video games of his youth he had never fired a gun, never
held one, and holding this contraption felt alien to him. In movies
and TV shows actors always looked comfortable holding guns, it
looked easy, as if they fitted in your hands and were meant to be
there and that may well be the case for smaller handguns but this
piece of machinery felt clumsy. It wasn’t a pump action shotgun and
pressing a small button on the side of the barrel nearest the
trigger and pulling the two barrels down, the gun split in 2 on a
couple of hinges and two golden bright shells were sat in the
breach like two eggs in a cup.