Three things contributed to Simon's survival and the survival of his sister. He delivered whoever the Creature asked him to, he thought ahead and he knew when and how to stop thinking entirely. He switched between modes as easily as he had switched gears in the car he had dumped.
Huge rainddrops spattered on his raincoat - thinking ahead - which was good, because the rain would also help to confuse any evidence he had left behind.
As he walked, he was dimly aware of the Creature, circling his mind. It was doing so more proprietorially than with any real interest, but he made sure to give it nothing to consider or question anyway.
He turned to meditation. As he strolled along the narrow paths, the muddy roads and later the glistening streets, he imagined that everything was being washed clean. Even him.
He counted the footsteps that disturbed the flooded gutters and caused the reflected sky to tremble; he counted street lamps that turned raindrops into sparks; and he counted the occasional car that held him in its headlights before passing by, as if satisfied that he wasn't the one they were looking for.
*
Home was a two-storey brick building, boxy with a bay window, much like its suburban neighbours. He hadn’t done any work on it since he inherited it, so it remained old-fashioned and in disrepair. He had intended to tidy things up, to repaint the walls and fix the leak in the bathroom, to lay wooden flooring and fix the hinges on the cupboards, or perhaps replace the kitchen entirely, with spotlights and an electric cooker instead of a microwave and a second-hand electric hob plugged into the mains.
He had begun the project well, ripping up the carpets in the bedrooms and stripping the peeling paper from the stairway and the bathroom walls. He'd removed the broken cupboard doors and had bullied furniture into what was now a store room downstairs in order to make room for repair work and painting. Having done this, however, he discovered that he lacked the proper motivation to finish a single one of the jobs.
Having discarded the things he didn't want, he discovered that it was enough that they were gone.
He was not short of funds, thanks to his inheritance from his father, via his mother, so he could have paid a builder to come in and do it all for him, but he refused. He never had any guests or workmen inside the house. It was a fortress and a sanctuary. Neither needed to be pretty.
Structurally, it was sound and his father had upgraded the windows and doors on every part of the house. The new front and back doors were fitted with toughened security glass and a turn of the handle sent five metal bolts into the frame with a clack. It wouldn't keep an intruder out if they were determined, but it would slow them down and hopefully that would be all he needed.
From the outside, it looked like any other house on their Essex street, only somrwhat shabbier. It was set back from the road by a semi-circular drive, on which sat his shitty, metallic-blue Toyota Corolla, and was protected from view by evergreens, which also flanked the property.
Although their nearest neighbour was thirty seconds walk away, he sometimes felt as though he was alone, living in one of the nearby forests. While this was good for privacy, which he protected fiercely, it also reminded him of events that he would sooner block out.
If trees really did communicate, then the news of what he had done on the cliff had reached home before him. He glanced up at the foreboding branches before unlocking the front door and ducking inside.
He was met by the familiar disarray of the kitchen/diner, where every available surface was occupied, not at all like those show homes in the adverts. This was real-life. Yet there remained an otherness to the house, as though he was looking at it all through tissue paper. He felt like he’d been away for years, although it had only been one night, and almost felt himself drifting across the room like a ghost.
It was not the house that was in any way unreal, he knew, it was him. He was still connected to the Creature and would be until It released him, minutes or hours from now. It was reasonable to assume that his work was done for the night, but he could feel It circling his mind. It was observing, but It made no further demands.
He set about domestic chores, although his body wanted him to collapse and dream. Sleeping while the Creature was in residence was the most dangerous thing of all, because that's when thoughts rose up, unbidden, and who knew what the mind would throw up when it was moving towards unconsciousness, crazy things, repressed memories, the truth. Instead, he emptied the washing machine and hung an armful of wet clothes over the radiators. They looked like multicoloured skins. He counted them as he went … sixteen.
The sink was full of cups and plates, pots and pans, one in particular burnt black from an over-ambitious attempt to make flapjacks using convection setting on the microwave. He had left it to soak, but that had been some days ago and now it was a science project. He attempted to root out the plug to release the sludge of water, but there was no plug, only rotting food – peas, rice, spaghetti - and hair.
He unloaded the sink, so he could unblock it with the plunger.
One, two, three, four, five …
Then, he began washing up.
Six dinner plates.
Three breakfast bowls.
Eight forks.
Five desert spoons.
Five tea spoons. There should have been six, but one of them had gone missing. He wondered if it wouldn’t have been better to pare down to two of everything, rather than have to deal with all this shit he had inherited.
Eleven knives.
Throw it all away.
A corkscrew.
A manual juicer.
An electric tin opener. Broken.
He heard a toilet flush upstairs and then the sound of footsteps, on the stairs, in the hall.
“Hi,” the girl said.
Simon rinsed and stacked. Rinsed. Stacked.
She sat down at the breakfast bar and scooped up her college papers, underneath which lurked the mail from the last few days. For want of an empty space, she dumped them all on the floor next to her stool, then gave the same treatment to a large clothing catalogue and miscellaneous magazines and TV guides. She appeared to have been infected by Simon's cleaning drive, but then she uncovered what she had been looking for. She opened up the cardboard box and helped herself to a slice of cold pizza.
“Want some?” she asked.
Simon glanced at her and saw that she was wearing her blue dressing gown. The slice of pizza in her hand was yellow and green. She took a bite with her perfect, little teeth and a layer of hard cheese slid from the pizza base. She stuffed it into her mouth with her little finger. Although he had been desperately hungry, the sight turned his stomach. He bent over the sink and returned to scrubbing the non-stick surface from a frying pan.
“You know,” she said, above the sound of scouring, “I’ve only got revision today. I could skip college. We could do something.”
He could hear her flicking through the pages of a magazine.
“Sally,” he said. “I think you should go to college today. Exams are important.”
“They're not even real exams,” she replied, not picking up on the fact that he'd called her Sally. “They're mocks, remember? And I can study at home, as if I need to. I'd probably end up skipping out later anyway. They're like kids. I'd quite like an adult conversation, or as close as I can get to one with you.”
“I think it would be good for you to get out of the house today, Sally.”
“We could go to the park,” she suggested. “Scare the animals. Give them names.”
“Perhaps if I ignore her,” Simon thought. “Perhaps she'll get bored and go away of her own accord.”
He hung the frying pan on the wall and dried his hands, before returning to the laundry, deciding to separate the pile into bright colours, dark colours and whites. Good. That was the next five minutes accounted for.
Her clothes were all mixed in with his. Most of her items went into the bright colours pile. She had put her tie-dyed dress into the basket, which made things a little bit more complicated. He'd have to separate the bright colours into two piles. He took his time, concentrating only on what he was doing, ignoring the smell of a pizza slice warming in the microwave and the sound of beeping when it was done.
The black pile he created comprised of fleecy jumpers, combat trousers and t-shirts, all largely the same colour, but different to his eye, because they were his clothes, most of which he had bought at army and navy stores a couple of years ago. He also extracted several pairs of black socks, a woolly hat and a pair of fingerless gloves from the mound of dirty clothes that had grown around the laundry basket like a tumour.
He was getting there.
Slowly.
Slowly was good.
Behind him, the girl dropped her magazine onto the floor where it landed with a slap. She made a farting sound with her mouth and switched the kettle on.
“Coffee?” she asked.
“No.”
“Tea?”
“No, Sally. No tea.”
“Hot chocolate?”
He straightened up, but still didn't look at her. “Go to college, Sal,” he said.
The girl sighed again. “Will you stop calling me that? I hate it.”
The white pile was always their smallest collection of clothing, but now, with the addition of a single bedsheet and a couple of pillowcases, he had enough for a full load. As he filled the machine, her bras reminded him that she wasn't a girl any more. Like him, she had grown up quickly. She was just bored, playing silly, but it was irritating nonetheless. He needed her out of his (thoughts) space, because despite the locks on the doors and all the security glass, he had a key; he was the crack in the windscreen.
“You were quiet last night. Maybe we can hang out today; have some fun. Remember that? Fun?”
“Maybe when you get back,” Simon said.
“But I can-“
He faced her at last and his expression cut her off mid-sentence. She dropped her pizza.
“Go away,” he said and she actually ran, taking the stairs quickly but one at a time. Stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp.
Perhaps she was still a kid after all, masquerading as an adult, as was he.
He heard her door slam shut.
Good.
Slam all the doors. The further away the better.