The Devil’s Spawn.
Standing in front of him.
Their eyes glinting with such curiosity he felt for a moment they were staring right through him. He stepped back several paces. Much too late, he realized they were in fact looking at the people behind him.
He never heard the gun fire. He sensed just one brief rush of scorching, arid wind, accompanied by an eerie whoosh that made his ears pop. He never felt the bullet, either, which entered through the base of his skull, partially severing his spinal cord. It traversed through his left cerebral hemisphere into his right cerebral hemisphere, on through his frontal lobe, exited above his right eye, and ricocheted off the brick facing of the porch, gouging a small hole in the cement pointing.
For an instant, he saw Lara, standing in brilliant, milky light at the end of a long tunnel; then the faces of the Devil’s Spawn stood in front of her, blocking his view with their smirking faces, smirking Victory! at him, savage, graceless smiles stretched across their faces, while their eyes burned with hatred. They were moving towards him, or perhaps he was moving toward them. He called out, in desperation, ‘Lara!’
Her name echoed in the hollow darkness, and dissolved into the Spawns’ giggles, ringing, wracking, deafening, childish giggles. The only light now came from the four eyes, four pools of luminescent, colourless dry ice. They were receding. Soft gravel was cradling him.
There were faces above him now, two different faces, silhouettes in the darkness, something familiar about them. Slowly his ravaged neural pathways lightened their features for him, turning them a vivid night-vision green. And then through his addled thoughts and fading consciousness, as his blood drained out onto the gravel, memory began flooding in. Into his confusion entered a fleeting moment of understanding. He knew now why they seemed familiar.
In the fancy sports car in the parking lot behind the school-house. Those profiles through his night-vision glasses as they had turned to kiss. The man and the woman.
It was them.
97
Halley was in his little battery-powered police jeep. Baseball cap on back to front, huge grin on his face, driving around and around the lawn in the back yard of their house. Roaring around the inflatable rubber paddling pool, swerving to avoid stray toys, flashing his lights, hooting his klaxon. It was his third birthday; he was fine today, he was having a great day.
Naomi grinned, too, as she watched him. She gripped John’s hand with joy beneath a warm Californian sun. It was a day that was as perfect as it was possible for any day to be – when you knew your son had less than a year to live.
The dream was slipping away. She kept her eyes shut, tried to sink back into it. But a cold draught of air was blowing on her face. And she needed to pee. She opened her eyes. The room was pitch dark and her clock said 6.01.
The gale was still raging outside. There were all kinds of creaking noises from the beams above her, rattling noises from the windows; draughts.
John was still deep asleep. She lay for some moments trying to resist that need to pee, pulling the duvet up over her face to shut out the cold air, closing her eyes, trying to return to that Californian summer afternoon. But she was wide awake and all her troubles were pouring back into her mind.
What day was it today? Friday. They were taking Luke and Phoebe to see Dr Michaelides, to talk about special schools. Then in the afternoon they were going to see a couple of dog breeders, one which had a litter of Rhodesian Ridgeback puppies, and another breeder who had a litter of Alsatians sired by a police dog.
Trying not to wake John, she slipped out of bed and padded into the bathroom, wrestled herself into her dressing gown and pushed her feet into her slippers. She peed, then washed her hands and face, brushed her teeth.
Horrible bloody bags under my eyes.
She peered closer into the mirror. More wrinkles. Every day there seemed to be fresh ones. Some were beginning to look like crevasses. Let’s face it, kiddo, you are ageing. Another decade and you’ll be a wrinkly. A couple more after that and you’ll be a crumbly. Next thing you know, Luke and Phoebe’ll be pushing you along the seafront in a wheelchair with a tartan rug over your knees while you sit there, with mad white hair, drooling.
Except.
Would Luke and Phoebe ever take care of John and herself? Would they ever care enough? Would they want to be bothered? Wasn’t that what kids were supposed to do? Wasn’t that
the way life was supposed to work? How did that bumper sticker she’d seen go? GET EVEN! LIVE LONG ENOUGH TO BECOME A PROBLEM FOR YOUR KIDS!
She closed the bedroom door behind her and switched the landing light on. Luke and Phoebe’s bedroom door was shut and the box-room door was shut. They were usually up at this hour.
But this morning, silence.
The stair treads creaked like hell, and she went down slowly, mindful of not wanting to wake John. Then, as she reached the hall, she felt a stab of unease. The safety chain on the front door, which they always kept in the locked position when they were indoors, was hanging loose.
Had they forgotten to attach it last night? She supposed they must have done, and made a mental note to tell John. Right now they needed to be more vigilant about safety than ever.
Then something else struck her. She turned and looked at the Victorian coat stand. It seemed emptier than normal. Where were the children’s coats? Her eyes shot down to the ground, to the hollow in the middle of the stand where they all kept their boots. Luke’s blue wellingtons and Phoebe’s red ones were missing.
Her unease deepened. Had they gone for a walk? At this hour, in the pitch darkness, in the filthy weather?
She opened the heavy oak door, pushing hard against the strong, biting wind and flinching against stinging droplets of rain, and peered out into the darkness.
And froze.
Something was lying on the ground right in front of the porch, a sack or an animal, or something.
A slick of fear shot down her spine. She stepped back warily, looked at the panel of light switches, and pressed the red one.
Instantly all the exterior floodlights, except one, came on and she saw it was not a sack or an animal. It was a man, sprawled on his back. A handgun lay in the gravel near him. Barely registering more than that, she slammed the door shut, pulled on the safety chain, and threw herself up the stairs, choking with shock.
‘John!’ She burst into the bedroom and switched on the light. ‘John, for God’s sake, there’s someone downstairs, outside, a man, a man. Unconscious, dead, I don’t know. Gun. There’s a gun!’
She ran out, along to the children’s bedroom, threw open the door; but even before she had hit the light switch she could see the room was empty. The box room was empty, too.
John came out onto the landing in his dressing gown, holding his shotgun. ‘Where? Where outside?’
Staring at him in wild, bug-eyed panic, she blurted, ‘F-f-f-front – f-f-front door. I don’t know where Luke and Phoebe are.’
‘Call the police – no – hit panic button, quicker – by the bed, press the panic button. They’ll come right away.’
‘Be careful, John.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Front door.’ Trembling. ‘I don’t know where Luke and Phoebe are. I don’t know where they are, they may be outside.’
‘Panic button,’ he said. Then he switched the safety catch off, and headed cautiously downstairs.
Naomi ran to the side of the bed, pressed the red panic button and immediately the alarm began sounding inside and outside the house. Then she grabbed the phone and listened for a second. There was a dial tone. Thank God. She tried to stab out 999, but her fingers were shaking so badly that the first time, she misdialled. She dialled again and this time it rang. And rang.
‘Oh Jesus, come on, answer, please, please!’