Firdy held the door and nodded for Sarah to enter before him. Doing so would cause her to brush against him. She’d have to be nearer to him than they had been during the entire journey in the van.
“I won’t bite,” he said and smiled, on the brink of losing his patience. She had no choice but to do as he said so she bit her lip and forced her right foot in front of left and her left foot in front of right. She held her breath as she passed between him and the door frame. The smell of him invaded her nostrils and she gagged.
He’s in my lungs, she thought. He's inside me.
When he crossed the threshold after her, everything in the world lost its balance. His presence – his stench, his skin, his lopsided gait – was vile and terrifying in their private space. They had been safe here once and he was ruining it. It seemed impossible that this was happening. She wanted to scream at him and tell him so; she wanted to throw plates.
He locked them in.
“Now give me your keys,” he said and paused for only a moment before adding: “Give them to me or I’ll take them from you.”
She reached into her jeans and tossed the keys to him. He attempted to catch them with his right hand, but missed by a good way and they clattered at his feet. As he knelt down to retrieve them he didn’t take his eyes from her, as if willing her to take the opportunity to run, knowing that there was nowhere to go now.
She maintained his gaze, although she felt violated.
Crouched on the floor like an imp, the folds of his long black coat gathered like a crushed flower and when he picked up her keys it was with a hiss of leather against the tiles. Rising, he was insect-like, all knees and elbows and thin limbs. She couldn’t help averting her eyes then. She heard him snigger and then he was limping his way towards the living area, pocketing her keys as he went.
“Sit down,” he said. “Be still. Don’t talk.”
She sat on a stool at the breakfast bar, alternately watching Firdy and glancing through the window that looked out onto the drive.It was going to be frightening when Firdy discovered that Simon wasn’t here.
Even as she listened to him securing the front door using the second and third locks, she thought of escape. She knew that a weapon had been taped beneath the breakfast bar, inches from her knees. It would be a knife or a police baton or maybe an escrima sharpened to a point. There were no guns.
If you pull one of these things out, Simon had told her, be prepared to use it.
Firdy was grunting, struggling with one of the locks.
She was prepared to kill him. Escaping was the problem. Each time Firdy hit a pothole or bumped the kerb, she heard the thing in the back scrabble around. It butted the walls, scratched and snorted. She didn't know what it was, but its temperament was even worse than Firdy's.
Even if she did kill Firdy, the thing in the van would get her. Eventually, it would break out or someone would investigate the abandoned vehicle and it would be free. Firdy had made it clear that its purpose was to find her and that its desire was to eat some of her. Firdy was the only thing between her and the animal.
“Don’t look so unhappy,” Firdy said. “By tomorrow, it’ll be over. Try to relax until then. You’re here, with me, and you don’t have a choice. So get used to it. And get some rest.”
He removed his hat, revealing his hairless scalp. In secondary school, her pottery class had once been tasked to make model heads. They had moulded clay around newspaper balls, building the mixture up and then defining it until they were skull-shaped. She’d made nostrils by shoving a pencil into the nose. She worked for an entire day on the eyes but couldn’t quite get them right and had attempted to smooth the skin all over the head, but could always see the dents made by her tools and the trenches made by her fingers. It was not bad for a first attempt though, she had thought.
She had glazed the head, holding it by the neck between her thumb and index finger and dipping it into the pot of yellow gloop.
On her way to the kiln for the biscuit firing, however, it had slipped from her fingers. After it had slapped against the stone floor, she noticed its peculiar expression, the curl of its mouth and the plaintive, lopsided eyes accusing her.
She tried to fix it, but there wasn’t time to do a good job. The firing would happen with or without it. Guilty, she quickly straightened his features and placed him inside.
The following morning, Mrs Gutteridge told the class that two of the heads had exploded during the firing and, as it was a very small kiln, they had managed to damage every other head in the process. All except for Sarah’s, which everyone thought was unfair, because hers had been the worst of all. Mrs Gutteridge had the head on her desk, where it sneered at everyone.
At home, Sarah had promptly smashed it with a hammer and had scraped the pieces into the bin. Now he was back, alive and climbing the stairs with his mis-shapen head. His gloved right hand made a recurrent wet slap and hissing sound against the wall as he used it to steady himself.
When he was out of sight, she slid her hand under the breakfast bar and felt for the weapon.
*
As he climbed the stairs, he felt nervous and afraid. His life was coming to an end and he was making it happen. In fewer than 24 hours, he’d be gone. So would Simon. So would Sarah. He wasn’t afraid to die - he’d looked forward to this for far too long - he was only scared that he might fail, having come so far. This was his chance to prove himself, to show how well he could do without the Third's guidance and thus earn his place in the next life.
Sarah’s escape was a big negative, but he had made the best of it. He'd got her back to the house, calm and afraid and predictable. Besides, he had the main thing in place already.
With his hand on the door to Simon’s room, he couldn't help considering consequences of the Third rejecting him at the last moment.
Thanks for everything, but it wasn't enough.
He’d kill everyone. It was that simple.
And when they were dead, he’d ...
... left it open.
Simon's door should still have been open; he'd deliberately left it that way so he could hear what was going on in there.
He considered retrieving the Cat from the van, but decided against it. His control was limited. He couldn't even feel the Dog. Whatever he found in that room, he'd deal with it alone.
His hunting knife slid easily from inside his coat. He upended it so he could thrust it in a downward arc, into a shoulder or an arm or a leg, and so the serrated edge would punch in cleanly. He had to remember to leave the knife in, otherwise Simon might bleed to death. He had to be very careful. He knew how quickly things could go wrong.
Listening with his ear against the door for a minute, he heard no sound on the other side and wondered if Simon was doing the same, holding his breath.
He shoved the door and it swung open, slamming against the wall inside.
Simon was not there.
Nor was the Dog.
As the door reverberated, on its way back to the closed position, Firdy entered the room. The rope he had used to secure the Dog was heaped on the floor, one end still attached to Simon's desk. The other end was draped over what looked like a discarded rug. He walked towards it and fell to his knees.
He removed his glove to lay his bare hand on Dog’s side.
In attempting to remove the rope from his neck, his fingers disturbed torn flesh. He found three stab wounds in the back of his neck. Although the Dog's throat had been cut too, Firdy didn't imagine that it had been a quick death.
Trembling, he let the Dog slide from his hands. Aside from the Dog – dead - and Simon - missing, everything appeared to be as it had been. What had he overlooked when setting this up? Somehow Simon had got far enough from Dog that he was impeded by his rope, but it was little more than a box room. There should have been nowhere to run. Had Simon managed to get past the animal?
Firdy shook his head and found that once he had started he didn't want to stop. He drew a deep breath. The cool air cleared his head somewhat. The window was open. From his knees, he could see the tops of trees silhouetted against the ocean-dark sky, waving, watching, laughing. A sudden breeze toyed with the curtains, explored the room, found his bald head and played with the scars. This so-called fresh air stank. He wanted this life over with.
He spent a few painful seconds straightening up and in the process the significance of the open window came to him. On investigation, he found that it was not open, but smashed. With a naked finger, he touched one of the remaining shards that remained in the frame. There was so little glass on the floor that it could only have been broken from inside.
He leaned out.
It was a long way down.
Now he knew what had happened to the Dog. He'd flung himself out of the window, chasing Simon, and he'd hung himself. Simon had finished him off.
Firdy didn't know where Simon was … only what he would do to the escapee when he found him.
*
She probed with the fingers of her right hand, looking over her shoulder to see if Firdy was descending. The stairs were empty.
She laid her hand firmly on the thing and gave a yelp as the blade sliced deep into two fingers. That was stupid. Her palm was full of blood by the time she found a cloth under the sink.
With the cloth wrapped around her hand, she thrust it, burning, into her pocket. She was allowing herself a croak of pain when, upstairs, Firdy yelled. She stared up towards Simon's room, where the yell was followed by a crash.
This, she assumed, was the sound of Firdy realising that Simon wasn’t home after all.
She returned to the bench and detached the knife.
*
The bulb in the lamp smashed, but the rest of the contraption made an unsatisfying clatter against the wall before dropping to the ground. Simon's room was so sparse that there was nothing to hand that was worth breaking.
Firdy stormed onto the landing and kicked open the bathroom door. As he expected, Simon was not inside.
He had already turned Sarah's room over looking for clues as to her location. As soon as he saw that Simon was not in there either, he completed the job. He ripped the Chicago poster from the back of the door. The middle section tore away, leaving two heavily made-up women on either side. He clawed at them, pulled them down, kicked them across the littered floor. He swiped photographs and paintings and sketches from the walls, hauled over the chest of drawers, turned over the bed. A Maglite torch rolled across the floor; he upended it and hurled it at the television screen. Missed. He kicked the television from its stand, but it didn’t break, so he made his stance wide and picked it up, attempting to raise it above his head. Its wires kept it tethered though, so he dropped it and the floor shook. He tried to put his foot through the screen, but again it wouldn’t break. He roared with frustration.
He wanted to strangle Simon the way he had strangled the Dog. He wanted to see his eyes roll back in his head, to snap his fucking neck.
But the Third needed Simon. Above all, she needed him. She had been specific about that.
They'd be committed to existing together. The thought made him nauseous. There was something, however, that would redress the balance.
It was time to for answers from Sarah. If she happened to die in the process, then so be it.
*
The thing in the van snorted, barging into the walls, tearing strips out of the floor. Its steps thudded in a circular path in the darkness.
It sensed that something terrible was going to happen. It could feel Firdy's anger spiralling out of control, making him consider doing something that would upset the Third.
Killing the baby had been a bad move, but in the end that was collateral damage. They had got the girl; all they had to do now was deliver her along with her brother.
It paced the darkness, attempting in vain to communicate with its so-called master. In truth, the only thing it respected, the only thing it feared, was the Third. When she returned, Firdy's raging would be nothing compared to her anger.
*
He had been meaning to question her when he came down the stairs, but her clear skin with the slight odour of sweat and those big eyes looking at him all trembling made him want to crush her perfect body, snap her arms and punch in that pretty face; he wanted to yank her by the arm and dislocate her beautiful shoulder, show her what he could have done to her all along if he hadn't been nice.
Seeing the expression on his face, she slid from her stool and started backing away.
“Tell me where he is,” Firdy said, “or I’m going to break every fucking bone in your body. I’ll start with your fingers. I’ll bite them right off.”
He was jabbing a single finger at her; the rest were curled around the handle of a knife that dwarfed the one she had managed to secure for herself. She kept it hidden behind her back as she spoke.
“There’s no need for that,” she said. “I’ll tell you what I know, but you probably know more than I do.”
The speed of his movement took her by surprise. His fist slammed into her chest and she fell and fell and fell, spilling over a stool and landing painfully on her arm, banging her head against the tiles. Her knife spun away from her. She heard the clatter, but didn't see where it went.
Before she could get up, he was coming again, landing on top of her. She bucked, but he overpowered her, his left forearm jammed against her throat, pinning her to the ground and cutting off her air at the same time.
“Stop wriggling,” he said, “or I’ll crush your throat.”
She gasped, a sound that terrified her. “Please,” she said, and she tried to draw a breath. Nothing.
“Give me a reason, you … fucking … cunt.”
His spittle landed on her lips and she gagged; his rotten-animal breath was hot against her face. His one good eye flicked around like a pinball and she thought she was going to laugh, but a scream came out of her mouth instead. Firdy released her throat and slapped his hand over her mouth.
She saw the knife that he meant to hurt her with, discarded on the floor. Its serrated edge was monstrous. He would be certain to twist it once it was inside her. She understood that he was capable of anything and had seen the desire in his eyes. Being sliced scared her even more than being stabbed; worst of all was the idea of being gutted, losing herself amid a bloody spray, splashing tiles, screaming, soaking the floor.
See that especially clean patch on the carpet?
Sarah woz ‘ere.
Firdy removed his hand from her mouth in order to snatch up the knife, which he did with great speed. He raised his arm high above his head. Her eyes were wide as he plunged the blade into her shoulder.
This time, his hand couldn't absorb her scream.
When she opened her eyes, crying with the pain, snot bubbling under his hand, he was glaring down at her.
“I'm enjoying this,” he said, “but it stops as soon as you tell me where he is.”
She had known that Firdy might try to kill her, but she hadn’t prepared herself for the possibility of being tortured first.
“I’m going to ask you some questions. I’d like you to answer them as completely as you can.”
Part of her wanted to tell Firdy that Simon had followed her to Walthamstow. It wanted to tell him everything to make the pain stop. The other part; the greater part, it seemed, said:
“Fuck. You.”
Firdy fingered the handle protruding from her shoulder. She stiffened and couldn't help crying out. “There will be consequences,” he said. “For both of you.”
“You won’t find him ... before he finds you.”
“We don’t have masses of time, so I’m going to start twisting.” He grabbed the handle and she wailed. “Last chance,” he said.
If this is the last thing I'm going to do, she thought, I'm going to do it with dignity. She bit her lip hard enough to draw blood and sucked in a deep, deep breath. He looked surprised.
“Okay,” he said. “Let's do it your way.”
She closed her eyes against the approaching pain, knowing that she would not have felt anything like this before. She didn't have much of a pain threshold. Even paper cuts made her want to cry. Nauseous already, she hoped that what Firdy was about to do would make her pass out. Teeth clenched, she waited for agony.
Instead, she heard something strike the kitchen window. She and Firdy looked towards the source at the same time and they heard a second strike, cracking the glass, and then a third, smashing the pane. Firdy paused, momentarily stunned and confused, as a hand reached in, unlocked the window from the inside and threw it open. Firdy rolled across the floor, knees and elbows thumping into the ground. He scrambled to his feet as Simon leapt through the window.
Another man might have got away, but Firdy was struggling to move after kneeling for so long. He aimed a kick at Simon who had closed the distance quickly, but Simon absorbed it, barrelling into him at full pelt and throwing him into the wall. They slid on the tiles, a tangle of arms and legs.
Sarah pushed herself away from the fight, overwhelmed by their grunts and rapid breathing, tearing clothes, the boom of Firdy's body hitting the wall again, then dropping to the ground, dragging Simon with him.
Simon performed what looked like a martial arts move that forced Firdy to his back and pinned him there, but the smaller man managed to fire a left hook across Simon's face. There was a spray of blood from Simon's mouth and a tooth rattled across the tiles.
Sarah forced herself to stop watching and went for the knife that she had lost. It wasn't immediately evident, so she checked the skirting boards and looked under the stools. As she searched, she heard blows landing behind her. She hoped it was the sound of Simon laying into Firdy, but she couldn't be sure. Neither of them spoke. It would be a fight to the death. Her hands shook as the certainty came over her. Finding her knife would be instrumental in swaying the balance.
It was underneath the counter. She crawled on her hands and knees, her right hand burning from the gash in her palm. She was unable to use her left arm at all without pain radiating throughout her shoulder and neck before shooting down towards her fingers.
As her bloody hand grabbed the knife, she realised that it had all gone quiet behind her. Fearing the worst, she slid out from beneath the counter.
Firdy was on his back, legs and arms bent as though he was about to slide backwards across the floor as she had attempted to do minutes ago, but he was still except for his chest, which heaved with exertion. He had thrown his head back. His mouth made an 'O' of exhaustion.
Simon, to her relief, was standing, regarding his fallen opponent. Sarah hurried across the kitchen to hand him the knife. He looked at it for a while before he took it from her, then he held it at his side while he watched Firdy again.
Firdy's jaw remained slack and Sarah saw that what teeth he had left were yellow or black and as crooked as tombstones. He had a distant, scared look on his face, as if something momentous were rolling towards him, a terrible horizon. Drool spilled over his almost-non-existent bottom lip. He groaned.
Simon didn't move. Sarah was surprised by the words that came to her.
“Kill it,” she said. Simon glanced at her and then back at Firdy who was writhing on the floor, moving not in agony but with pleasure. Neither of them spoke as Firdy grunted and appeared to orgasm, his gloved hand reaching between his legs at the moment of ejaculation. He collapsed then, on his back, getting his breath.
Simon's expression conveyed nothing. He strolled through the kitchen, slid the knife on top of a cupboard and returned to Firdy. He offered his hand and Firdy hauled himself up, nodded and then staggered into the living area where he slumped in the armchair.
Sarah grabbed Simon's sleeve in her fist.
“What are you doing?” she said.
“Calm down, Sally,” he said. His words stabbed her. Sally. Simon was gone again. They'd missed their opportunity to rid themselves of Firdy. “It's going to be alright,” he said and she knew that he was lying.