Hunters: A Trilogy (59 page)

He was pushing her on a swing, an old metal swing, the one from the caravan park in Wales, a place where Jane used to go almost every weekend when she was a child. The rusty chains suspending the seat rasped as she swung like a pendulum. She turned and looked down at him; he was a long way below her and seemed to be getting further away with every new push.

In fact, when she thought about it, he was miles down below now, a tiny figure with long arms, getting farther and farther away with every new shove. As she looked back at him, Jane felt as though she was about to slip from the metal seat. The thought of flying seemed like a good idea, it almost tempted her. She heard it calling. ‘Fly, Jane, jump off and we’ll fly!’ The voice seemed to come from deep inside her head, she tried to ignore it but the temptation was definitely there, perhaps it would make the awful stitch in her side go away.

She heard her father whispering loudly in her ear, his words drowning out the other, darker, voice. Jane wondered: ‘How was he able to do that when he was all the way down there?’ She heard him quite clearly, though.

His voice reached out. ‘You just hold on tight now, little girl,’ it said. ‘You hold on really tight! Don’t you dare fall off of that swing, missy, if you do then you’ll never stop falling!’

Jane held tight, really tight, just like he’d said she should. ‘Oww, my side, Dad, stop pushing me, I want to get off – my side is killing me!’ The sound of her thoughts overwhelmed all else.

Then, with a solid thump, her father caught her. She banged into his shins, feeling him as he took her in those caring arms. She fell backwards into him and as she did so, Jane smelt her father. The familiar aroma of whiskey filled her senses, lawn-clippings and peppermints – the ones he sucked so that her mother wouldn’t smell the whiskey – all the aromas of her childhood cuddles came and rescued her from the dark pit beckoning below. Jane looked up at her father, watching as he smiled. She saw him, she heard him.

‘Good girl, we can’t have you falling off that swing, now can we? Good girl, there’s a love, there’s my little one.’

Jane felt him hold her, watching as the light came to smother them.

Her side flared with heat and she turned away from it to see her father walking into the glow. Turning back to her one last time, he waved at her and she saw his smile – that million dollar smile. Oh, how she missed that smile.

As she faded away, Jane heard him say: ‘Just hold on tight, lady, it’s not time to fall off, not yet it isn’t. Don’t you dare fall, not just yet, do you understand?’

Then he said something else, words that she really did listen to.

‘Run, Jane, run!’

The last thing she remembered was a sensation in her mouth. It was as though someone had filled it with water, living water. The coolness seemed to have a mind of its own, it explored every inch of her insides as it made its sinuous way down into her stomach. Jane felt as though she was going back into herself. She slipped into a place, a place she remembered. Then, just as the realisation began to dawn upon her, the lights went out. Everything went out.

***

When she awoke, Jane thought the pain had gone. In fact, she wasn’t even sure if there had been a pain. ‘Perhaps we managed to get a bit too carried away with the brandy,’ she thought. Turning her head, she saw the swirling, green curtain of energy surrounding her. At that precise moment, she knew that what she was experiencing had bugger-all to do with any brandy.

‘Oh, no… Ken, Kenny?’ She croaked out her plea, coughing with the effort.

As her muscles jerked in reaction, Jane remembered what the pain in her side had felt like. A raw slice of stinging heat knifed into her abdomen – she shrieked in agony. Turning away from the pain, she found herself to be standing in the rain, near an old bus stop. As she turned her face from the wetness and the wind, Jane saw that she was surrounded by hedges and fields, it was the countryside, and she remembered it.

‘Where am I?’ Her mind raced back. ‘This is Wales again, isn’t it? It’s the bus stop by the park, where we used to play when we were kids…Dad, are you there, Daddy?’ She turned and looked, but he wasn’t there. No-one was there.

Only the rain and the cold wind kept her company.

She shivered, wincing as the pain slithered back into her belly once more. This time it was much deeper, it reached up and clasped her heart within its thorny fingers. Jane felt it squeeze her soul and she cried out again.

‘Enough of this, you prick – get off me!’

She rose up inside and turned to run, the pain dragged at her but she tore from its grasp. Jane felt something rip, deep inside, and then she was free, free and running. As she half-ran and half-staggered into the green mist, she heard the noise of an engine. Looking up, she saw there was a bus heading towards her. It was the old one, a cream and red-coloured bus, the one they would catch a ride in down to the beach every Saturday. The one where they would all sit across the long back seat, messing about, feeling the cracked leather scratching their bare legs. The one where that faint smell of oil seeped through the hot metal floor. It was that bus, Jane knew it. She had a thought, a memory.

‘Is this my bus? The one Ken meant – oh, no!’ Jane fought to stay alive, but the pain tried to drag her back down into the mire once again.

She heard it speak to her.

‘Just relax, lil’ lady, your bus is right on time. Just hop up on board, why dontchya? It’s a free ride, yessiree, it’s completely free!’ Then she heard another voice in the background, a dark voice. It whispered, thickly. ‘Only thang is, you won’t be getting off this here free ride – you won’t be getting off it ever, never, ever. Not never-ever-ever! You’re coming with me…’

The awful voice chuckled. Jane felt the echo in her heart. Fear and anger jerked her from the stupor she had been sucked into. Pushing the dark things from within her, she looked up at the bus and saw the driver. He looked like Red, only older and meaner. His ginger hair was unkempt and his face wasn’t quite as round. ‘I thought he was dead…’ It was the only thing Jane was able to think of as she stood rooted to the floor and watched the old bus approach.

She heard him grind the gearbox and listened as the engine whined and jerked its way up the slope. The bus became silhouetted in a dark halo of diesel fumes as it struggled towards her. The man was waving to her, as Jane watched he leaned out of the window and spat a mouthful of tobacco juice into the green, Welsh hedgerow. The action was to be his undoing.

‘You’re nothing but a filthy bastard!’ she screamed at him, and then turned to run, run as though her very life depended upon it. And it did.

Jane heard him laughing. A terrible sound of hatred and disease, spewed into her mind, the words mocking her. ‘Aww, c’mon, Lady-Jane, where’s your sense o’ huumorrrr?’ She didn’t look back, instead, Jane did as her father had ordered – she kept running. Dark hair swirling in front of her face, gut screaming in protest at the white heat of pain. Pushing them all to one side, Jane ran into the mist and the blackness. She ran and ran. Memories and fear filled her mind.

Time stopped, she had no more knowledge. No more memories.

She was frozen in time – frozen in a place that exists in between time.

No more anything, nothingness.

***

Through the blackness and the vacuum, she came back. Alone, and of her own free will, she returned. When the Darkness had finished with her, lost its battle against her spirit, Jane came back.

Looking up through tears of pain and fear, she saw George. He came and stood at the edge of her bed and lifted her hand into his. Jane felt his cool skin. The pain ceased immediately, almost as though it flooded up her arm and into the old man. He stood and smiled down at her, those blue eyes gazing into her inner-being. She let that gaze take her, whisk her away to some other place. The weird thing was, in her mind, she would have sworn that George was wearing her father’s old trilby. In the darkness she followed George to a place, a quiet, restful place where neither the pain nor any, bastarding, bus drivers were invited.

She heard him say: ‘Sleep now, my dear, you have no need to be awake. Just sleep, when you awake the pain will be gone. Trust me.’

She did trust him, and she did sleep, slept for a long time.

When she awoke, really awoke this time, Jane found she was lying in a large white bed, a bed that stood in the middle of a large white room. There was a large white duvet and even larger white pillows. In fact, when she looked around, the whole place had a ‘large white’ theme going on. Walls, floor and ceiling, everything was in the gleaming neutral shade. Even the fan blades, which rotated overhead, were large and very white. She lay there and rested.

Jane remembered everything and knew that she had endured some terrible experience. She wondered: ‘Am I dead?’ Looking at the room, and sensing the warmth of her own body, she knew that she couldn’t be dead. But it must have been close. ‘Very close!’ The sensation of having been near to death remained very real to her, and Jane realised how lucky she had been. ‘That’s if I am still alive, mind you,’ she thought, idly. The whiteness, which she was currently surrounded by, was somewhat disconcerting. ‘Perhaps I fell off the swing after all?’ As the sensation of her father’s arms returned, Jane knew she hadn’t fallen. ‘Just a little stumble, is all, a little trip-up, perhaps,’ she thought. ‘Everything will be just fine…’ She was correct, and needn’t have worried about the whiteness too much, either.

When George entered, he was in stark contrast to it, the whiteness. The old man looked like an extra from some Kung Fu movie she had seen along the way. He was dressed from head to foot in black and looked very fetching. Even his brown sandals had been swapped for a pair so new that Jane almost smelled the black leather. They still had the shiny buckles on their sides, and they still seemed to be winking at her. George wore one of those suits that didn’t possess a collar. It matched perfectly with the black silk top that lay under. It looked very Asian, Indian, perhaps. Under his arm, he carried a small box and it, too, of course, was covered in black material.

Striding across the room from an entrance that Jane hadn’t seen open or close, he crossed the gleaming floor and came to the side of her bed. Placing the box on the table next to her, George moved closer and took hold of her hand.

‘Hello my Lady, how are you?’ he asked.

Jane felt his hand tremble and then, to her utter amazement, George began to cry. She stared into his face and watched as the faded blue eyes filled with tears. He stood looking down at her, letting the shining droplets roll down his face without making any attempt at wiping them away.

‘Oh dear, George, please don’t do that,’ she whispered. ‘I’m fine, I’ll be okay.’ Jane squeezed his hand and he smiled through the tears at her.

Reaching into his breast pocket, George extracted a fine, black silk handkerchief. Using the cloth, he brushed the tears away and then tucked it back into his trousers. He sat on the bed next to her. ‘Yes, yes you will be fine, my dear,’ he whispered. ‘I am so overwhelmed with relief that I cannot begin to tell you.’ He breathed deeply. ‘We were this close,’ he said, holding up his hand, showing her the tiny gap he left between his thumb and forefinger. ‘So close – too close!’ he exclaimed. ‘We very nearly lost you, and if it had not been for…for something quite…’ George stopped, almost as if he was confused, or perhaps in fear of alarming her.

Jane finished the sentence for him. ‘If it hadn’t have been for my father, is that what you mean, George?’ she asked, looking him in the eye. This time it was Jane who smiled knowingly.

He nodded. ‘Yes, I am not quite sure what to say about that, it is not something we have experienced before, my dear,’ he replied, whilst looking serenely at her.

Jane gave him another smile. ‘Well, let me tell you something, George,’ she said. ‘It’s not the first time that my Dad has come to me – I used to see him regularly, until Ken came along. He is always in my thoughts and I have asked him many times before to help me. It’s no surprise to me that he was there when I needed him the most. My Dad was an extraordinary man, and I know he loved me dearly. I know that.’ She squeezed George’s hand and tried to sit up. George helped, and then, when Jane was upright, plumped the pillows into a better position behind her back.

‘There you are, my dear, is that better?’ he asked, softly.

Jane said it was just fine and asked if she might have a drink. Leaning across to the bedside table, George handed her a crystal goblet. It was quite beautiful, the intricate etchings and fine golden rim were almost hypnotic in their design. Just as Jane thought about all the things Ken had spoken of, George kindly introduced her to an astonishing, self-pouring jug. One slight motion of the hand was all it took for the water to swirl from the jug and into the goblet, like a living thing, the water simply slipped from one vessel into the other, and all without any help from Jane. The double-act was so amazing that she very nearly dropped the mesmerising goblet. She glanced at George, her bemused expression saying all.

He nodded in understanding, saying: ‘It is quite normal, Jane, water is the essence of everything, the very centre of all that we are – please, enjoy it!’

Jane nodded and drank. After two glasses she was sated.

Turning to stare at the old man, she said, ‘So, what should we do now, George, what happened to me? I felt as though I’d been shot. Where do we go from here, how are the boys by the way, did they finish with O’Hara?’ In all honesty, Jane felt much better and was really just working up to the point where we she was going to ask about getting back to Ken.

George told her that she had, indeed, been shot. He said that she had been both extremely lucky, and also very unlucky, if there was to be such a thing. The small calibre round had passed harmlessly through the fleshy part of her hip, that was the lucky part. But then it had glanced off her pelvis, the impact fracturing the slug to send a minute piece of its copper jacket on a detour, a detour leading straight towards one of her main arteries. The fleck of metal had left a hole the size of a pinprick in the vessel. Jane had begun to bleed to death, and that was the unlucky part. The rest of the bullet had exited through the small of her back, narrowly missing her spine and fortunately not hitting anything else vital on its way out. But she had been in trouble, deep trouble.