Back

Next

SIX

I was ready to go, I knew that much. But here I was, sitting staring at my corkboard. I had added everything I now knew. I had added Bertha, written quick scribbles about her shop (one shop, many entrances), and pinned up the business card she gave me. I had written about vampires (but not quite), and had written Garth's name, and 'Friday?' It was now Wednesday. I had written that he was a tailor. I wrote about the woman Vincent and Bertha had spoken with in her shop. I scribbled down what little I knew about the O'Leary's. Vincent had taken the tape with him when he left.

I hesitated, but then also wrote down 'First Visit', but was unsure what else to put on this particular note- 'destroyed', I added. And then remembered the words 'Dime', and 'Newmaker', though I didn't, at the time, remember that they were names. My corkboard was looking very crowded now. Good work for a dead man.

Because I was going to die, there was no doubt about that. Fuck, this was the best I'd felt in years. The most composed, surely. And it was all due to my suicide plan. "It's one thing to make plans, and another to follow them through," my grandmother said in my head. Fuck off, grandma.

Today was the day, but for what, I wasn't sure. Because the truth is, even though I was more set on dying now than I had been even before I'd met him, part of me did want to go with Vincent. I wanted to see what else there was to him. It was like picking at a scab, I thought then- you can't leave a scab half hanging off.

So, on scab-logic, of all things, I didn't off myself that day, and instead waited patiently for him to come and get me. Don't think that I was subconsciously delaying it- I absolutely wasn't. I had my mind set in stone about the wrist-slashing. But there was no rule to say that I couldn't kill myself after going to do this other thing.

When evening rolled around, a bit earlier than he usually arrived- maybe at about 11:30- I felt watched, and automatically went to the window. He beckoned me through, and I joined him outside. This time, I had worn a thick coat.

"When's this guy gonna drown, then?" I asked, as Vincent led us toward the city centre. A few passers-by gave us curious glances, but overall refused to meet Vincent's eye, often hurrying past with their heads down. My heart rate quickened whenever anyone walked past.

"In a few hours."

"Where?"

"A golf club. Quite far from here."

I looked at the snow on the ground. "It's not in season for golf, I don't think."

"The club is closed," Vincent replied. "He works there."

"How are we gonna get there?"

Vincent continued to walk a few paces ahead of me, but slowed enough to fumble with something in his satchel. He withdrew an old paper map of the city- the type you buy at rest stations.

"We'll walk through the city centre, try to get on the side of this main road here," he hummed, pointing at the map. "We'll walk up the highway as far as we can but there's really not enough time, so we'll try and hitchhike most of the way."

"I'm not sure I like the sound of that," I said dubiously.

"Hitchhiking's fine," Vincent replied smoothly, putting his map away. We were in the city centre now, still alive with activity, though most of the shops were closed. People were drunk, cheerful despite the cold weather, probably celebrating the holiday. I saw a lot of red-noses, and rosy-cheeks, and fearful half-glances. I heard slurred singing and chatter which died down almost immediately as we passed through the throng, and started back up again when we were far enough away. If I was paying attention, I would have liked to do a full survey of people's reactions toward Vincent, but I was preoccupied thinking of axe-happy maniacs pulling up toward us on the side of the highway, beckoning us into truck cabs with leering grins.

"You know why they make so many horror movies about hitchhiking?" I asked Vincent.

He smiled, an honest smile. "Yeah. I've seen most of them. You clearly haven't. The problem is nearly always posed by the hitchers, not the people offering the lifts: even in 'Texas Chainsaw', it's Nubbins who is the oddball, not the group that give him a ride. At the end, even, Sally is saved because someone pulls over and lets her ride away in his truck. People who offer lifts to the stranded are generally nice people."

I shrugged. "I've never seen it."

"'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'?" he said, looking at me weirdly.

"Nope."

"Never?" He looked genuinely disturbed by this. "God, you're weird." He muttered.

"Well, whatever. As long as you don't plan on killing the driver, we should be alright, then."

We plodded on through the cold night in silence. I suppose it was laughable, the idea that someone would attack Vincent: I imagined us being held up in some stranger's car, and him just staring at them with his white eyes, maybe tilting his head as if bored. That would take the wind out of anyone's sails. God, if I was driving and saw Vincent loom into view on the side of the road, I would hit the gas and tear past him. The only trouble we would probably face would be getting someone to pull over and give us a lift, with him looking like he did.

"Is that stretch of road good for hitchhiking, then?" I asked.

"Hm. I don't know. I usually just walk it, but like I said, we don't have time."

I looked down at Vincent's shoes. It was the first time I had realised that they were heavy, black, platform boots- no wonder he was so tall. They were dusty, old, scraped to hell. The right one was held together with duct-tape. Garth had said in the car the previous night that Vincent hadn't minded travelling.

"Do you walk most places?" I asked.

"Hm."

"What's the furthest you've walked?"

"I'm not sure. I've walked up and down the country. Sometimes it's just unavoidable."

"What, you don't have a rail card?" I said, laughing at my own joke. I had thought it was funny but he didn't respond.

We came to the outskirts of the city centre, where main roads joined up with the city grid. All of the cars passing by at this time of night were taxis, which I stared at wistfully.

"We can't hitch a cab," Vincent muttered at me. "I can't afford the fare."

"Me neither," I said. I wondered what people were doing at work right now. The kitchen would be closed, so at this time of night, if I was on shift, I would be wiping down tables and helping clean the last of the crockery. The bar would be open, though, and people would be making merry over pints, unaware of the cold night air that pressed against the windows. Safe, and warm. Vincent began to walk up the side of the main road, clinging close the grassy knoll and the bollards. There was no walking path- it was a fucking highway. A car blared it's horn at us angrily as it roared past.

The sickness was coming on again, I could feel it. Already, my head was in knots. Every hurried step jostled it and sent a blunt ache through one of my temples. I felt nauseous, and kept my head low, not looking up into oncoming traffic.

"Alright?" Vincent asked, looking back at me.

"I don't feel great," I responded.

"That's what's been killing you."

"Yeah, I know," I murmured, and then had to stop talking as I was paralysed by another wave of pain and nausea. I concentrated on walking, putting on foot in front of the other. I took measured breaths and hoped it would subside soon- I'd left my sizeable over-the-counter painkiller collection at home.

We had been walking for twenty minutes, receiving all manner of irate reactions from drivers, when Vincent began extending his arm out into traffic, thumb extended. I stumbled after him, still keeping my head bent low. It didn't seem like he was having much success. After a further ten minutes, a truck pulled over, its hazard lights on.

There was a woman in the cab, heavily muscled, in a white tank top. She had white-blonde hair pulled back from her face. She turned down the radio and spoke with a cockney accent. "Where're you boys headed, then?"

"A little further up the highway," Vincent told her. She didn't seem at all perturbed by him.

"Come on in, s'freezing out there."

Vincent slid into the middle seat of the cab, and I hauled myself up after him, closing the door. The woman pulled smoothly out back onto the road. Vincent introduced us both at her request, and she told us that her name was Tonnie. The cab of the truck was remarkably clean. The only thing to mark it as hers was a plastic yellow star key-ring, cheap, hung from the rearview mirror.

"Is he alright?" she asked Vincent.

"He gets sick," Vincent told her, not looking in my direction.

"Yeah, I bet he does- walking around on the side of the fucking road in the middle of the night. Where you gotta be that's so urgent?"

"Someone's going to die," Vincent said, and I shot my head up, eyes wide, staring at him. Tonnie, for her part, merely shrugged.

"Sounds about right," she said. "Lovely time of year for it."

I pinched Vincent's arm, hard, to get his attention, but he shrugged me off. For God's sake, this wasn't 'Texas Chainsaw'.

"What do you mean by that?" I said urgently, peering around Vincent, staring at Tonnie with bated breath.

"Nightmare in the winter, innit. Roads all covered in ice, people freezing over- like yourself."

"I feel a bit better now, actually," I lied.

"Well, please just don't puke in my truck, and we'll be golden."

"He's nervous about hitchhiking," Vincent said.

"No, I'm not," I cut in, even though my head hurt just to speak. "We can defend ourselves." I couldn't stop my voice from wavering, and Tonnie laughed.

"You're ill, and I could snap your friend here in half. Look at him, he's so skinny!"

Vincent seemed completely at ease. "What do you do, Tonnie?" he asked.

"Transport motorcycle parts," she said, gesturing to the back of the van. "Used to be a knight, but I got possessed by a demon for a bit. It kind of put me off the whole thing, to be honest."

"What kind of demon?" Vincent asked keenly. I just sat back in my seat and groaned. Another stranger.

"I don't know, mate, but I'll bet it was a fucked one. I made all these enemies. People I'd known for years got scared of me. Couldn't remember any of it afterwards. Have no idea how it even got out of me."

"Do you miss knight-ing?"

"Ah, yeah. It had its ups and downs, but I loved a good scrap as much as the next girl."

"And who were you scrapping?"

"Doom-heads up and down Camden mostly. Cult fanatics. End-of-the-world profiteers. Real nice people- ever met anyone like that?"

Vincent hummed to himself. "It's big down South isn't it? The doomsday craze?"

"Like you wouldn't believe. Not really a thing up here though. This is vamp country."

Vincent murmured something in agreement. All I could see in the dark of the cab were his gleaming white eyes.

"Do you pick up a lot of hitchhikers?" I asked to fill the silence.

Tonnie blew out a big breath of air: "If you'd asked me twenty years ago, I would've said yeah. More common back then. Don't get many people thumbin' lifts anymore, but it's not unheard of. Had a crazy in here last month but he was no trouble. No trouble at all. Dropped him off around Jarrow."

"You've been doing this for twenty years?" I asked, astounded. "I mean, I don't mean to be rude or anything... It's just, you don't look- how old are you?"

"That is a rude fucking thing to ask," she snapped, shooting me a glare, but then she sighed and seemed to soften a bit. "Last I remember it was the '70s and I was mucking about with the flower people and yelling 'give peace a chance' but in my spare time I was crackin' skulls with the hilt of my sword. Thirty years old. That fucking demon did something to me's what I think. 'Cos I wake up and they tell me it's 19-fucking-85 and I don't look a day. D'you get what I mean? I 'ent aged since then. Guess I'm still thirty."

"Oh," I said quietly. "I'm sorry. That must be... tough." I mean, really, what else was I meant to say to all that.

"I'm over it all now. Past trying to understand it. There's some fucked-up shit in this world that there's just no answers for, you know. It's like asking for someone to explain why water exists, or why we have two arms instead of seven, or why the sun doesn't just go out. Shit just happens."

"I mean... water... I'm fairly sure it exists because of like, hydrogen and oxygen and stuff. Like, elements? I don't know."

"I was speaking metaphorically," She snapped at me.

"Actually," Vincent cut in quietly, "Demonics are fairly straightforward. Did you ever consult an exorcist?"

"No?" Tonnie said, looking at him with interest. "D'you know one?"

"A few." He rustled around in his bag and withdrew a pen and a label card, the type he would stick on a tape. He scrawled down a number. "Call this guy. He's one of the best I know."

Tonnie took the number and put it on her pristine dashboard. "Thanks," she said breathlessly, and Vincent shrugged, and the cab fell into silence again.

"Up here," Vincent said after ten minutes, but instead of pulling over, Tonnie indicated and took us off the highway.

"Whereabouts?" she asked.

"There's a golf club up here. Keep following this road. I'll tell you when to turn."

Soon enough, we had pulled into a small carpark, overlooked by a wooden lodge. Behind the lodge, I could see the vast expanse of golf green, now white with snow.

"Thank you," Vincent said. "You didn't have to take us all the way."

"Don't mention it. I'll give your man a call. Stay safe, kids: good luck with your death." Tonnie glanced at me. "Feel better," she said.

We shuffled out of the cab and she raised a hand in goodbye and drove away. Vincent stared after her. "You know exorcists?" I asked him.

"Not the type you're thinking of."

"What type?"

"Real ones.

"Real ones?"

"Not Vatican-blooded Catholics waving bibles around. Real ones."

"Are you telling me you know for a fact that catholic exorcisms are fake?"

"No, but they only do a certain type of demon. Religious demon. She needs someone with a little more real-world knowledge."

"Do you believe in God, Vincent?"

"I am God," he said, and it sounded like he was trying to make a joke, or that he was quoting something, so I gave him a weak sardonic smile.

"Do you?" he asked me.

I paused. "No. My grandmother did. That's how she raised me. But I believe... that there are some things that are beyond answer or explanation, and God's too easy."

Vincent surveyed the scene, and then pulled out his camera. He gave the carpark a sweep, and the worked his way toward the clubhouse. I followed in silence. He handed me the camera when we approached the entrance, and I held it like a dead fish as he hunkered down to pick the lock. He took his camera back when he was done, and we walked into the clubhouse. Lights flickered on, probably by motion sensor, but no alarms went off.

I was still while Vincent worked. He filmed nonsensical things. Lingered on shots for long durations, and as I was wondering what was going on in his head, he would spin and go to film something else. My headache had subsided a bit. He moved through the lobby and into an adjoining hallway, his camera lingering on a trophy cabinet, and then, on the opposite wall, a row of framed employee photographs. When he had moved off, I stood and stared at the one he had focused his camera on. A middle-aged guy, still with a full head of hair, but forehead already pock-marked with liver spots. He had a big red nose in the photo, and rosy cheeks. I thought that adding a beard and hat to him would probably make him a good Santa. His name was emblazoned on a plaque underneath his photo: August 'Auggie' Mire. Probably the man that was to die tonight. I wondered if he was going through the same stuff as me, and that's why he was going to drown himself. I wondered if he had any family. I hurried after Vincent.

He was already through another set of doors, glass doors, and on a veranda area overlooking the green. Directly in front of us were several golf carts, covered by tarpaulin. I struggled to get my eyes to adjust the gloom, but Vincent seemed to have no such problem, and pointed at something on the horizon. "He's there," he muttered. "It's already starting."

Vincent hauled himself over the veranda railing and landed softly on the green a few feet below, camera steady. I opted to jog down the wooden stairs, and caught up with his as he strode across the green. He was focused, unblinking. Every so often, his camera would flit to a tree, or to the moon, but his eyes never wavered from the path in front of him. I could see the man now: Auggie. He was 200 metres ahead of us, and by the looks of it, blind drunk. He stumbled to and frow, veering dangerously close to the edge of a man-made lake. He clutched a half-empty glass bottle in his hand, and sung something sad that caught on the wind.

Vincent readied his camera. We were 100 metres away now, and Auggie turned to look at us. I expected him to raise his hand in greeting to Vincent, but he looked truly surprised to see anyone, disturbed even. Our eyes locked for only a fraction of a second as he swayed in place, but then he lost his footing and toppled backwards into the lake.

This was not happening.

Auggie thrashed about in the water, gasping for breath. My knees gave way and I fell flat on my ass, gasping with him. Vincent moved steadily forward, recording the whole thing. "He's not killing himself!" I cried. "Vincent! He's trying to save himself." Vincent said nothing, just a black shape on the grass in front of me. I retched and pushed myself up, fell down one more time but then got up and lurched forward.

"We need to help him for God's sake! Look at him!" Vincent remained unmoved and I yelled out in frustration, in fear, and went to push past him, aiming on throwing myself in the lake after Auggie. Vincent grabbed my arm and held me back. Still Auggie thrashed. "What the fuck are you doing!?" I yelled, struggling in Vincent's grasp. "This is an accident! It's not a suicide! Vincent! He doesn't want to die! Please! Please!" I sobbed and then I was hitting him, trying to break loose, but I looked back and the water was calm and still, and Auggie was gone.

Vincent's grip loosened. All the time, his camera had never wavered from the lake. My face was slack and my mind was blank. I had just watched a man die. I had just watched a man die. I bellowed out, and didn't even realise it was me that was making the noise. A long, drawn-out howl.

"We killed him!" I yelled at Vincent through the tears. Vincent dropped my arm and snapped his camera shut, his face a black mask.

"The water killed him."

"We could have stopped it! I thought he was like me! He was going to do it to himself... he didn't want that and we just- we let him fucking die! We're murderers. You're a fucking murderer."

"You do this! You go and you tape them dying and you don't help them! You kill them all."

"I never said it was suicide. I told you there were others." He was telling the truth, of course, but I didn't care.

"We killed him," I echoed, "You sick fuck." The tears kept coming. Tears for a man I did not know. Vincent had nothing to say to that, and I was enraged by his cool attitude, so I threw myself at him. We fell backwards into the snow. I flailed. I'd never fought anyone before, but I thought of Auggie thrashing about in the water and tears and snot flew and I hit Vincent again, and again, and again, and the camera flew from his grip. I jumped up, and snatched it away from his grasping hands, and then I was holding it and running. Running back across the green, and up the wooden veranda steps. I ran back through the clubhouse and collided with the front door, barging it open with my shoulder. I had run across the carpark and was running, following the road. Just running away from Auggie, and from the monster.

Next