Slow Burning Lies (28 page)

51

Once Patrick started to come round, the physical pain hit him. It was worse than before. His head now throbbed inside and out. His mouth was still desert-dry, but in addition his throat now felt like an acid burn.

And there was one more difference: he could move his right arm. He realized what object had been hitting him: it was his own fist, as bruised and as sore as his skull.

His hand reached out to the side, and found a hard, but flimsy, surface that flexed when he pressed his finger onto it.

And he knew exactly where he was. And he knew that the small fragments he felt on his face were not from the bear but were the flying leads attached to his temples.

He started to shout with rage, and smashed his clenched fist against the surface once, and then again, using the straps that still bound the rest of his body as purchase. The third strike went straight through, and the panel flew out, flooding the inside of the WishPhixxer pod with blinding light.

Then he stopped shouting as the spark of consciousness hit him. He knew what had happened: in that emotionally charge state that multiplies strength, his stronger arm had broken free.

Still blinking, he used his free hand to tug at the strap holding his other wrist down, and within seconds he had dealt with the others too and was able to stumble out of the pod.

He looked around.

Towards the blue door.

It was still moving, slowly falling to the shut position. Patrick detected a faint sliding noise from beyond it. He staggered over to it then launched himself at it, the hinges crunching under the strain of the door being snapped backwards.

And there he was – the Sandman – his hand frantically grasping about inside one of the drawers. He looked back to Patrick and tensed for a split second, then there was hint of joy in his eyes and the corners of his lips twitched upwards. He pulled a pistol from the drawer.

Patrick pounced on him before he had a chance to direct the pistol at him, grabbing both of the old man’s hands and pointing the pistol away. A smash onto the drawer and it fell apart like a badly made toy, scattering its contents – and the pistol – onto the floor. The Sandman struck Patrick three times with no effect. Patrick knew what had happened – and so did the Sandman judging by the expression on his face. Whether the DKK would eventually have the desired effect and claim his life, Patrick didn’t know and didn’t care. All he knew was it had made him as strong as a shire horse. He grabbed the Sandman, and with raw power coursing through his veins threw him across the room like a rag doll.

He stood with the pistol at his feet and looked to the other side of the utility room, to the Sandman, crumpled and motionless in an ungainly pose on the floor.

52

‘Leave it!’ the man in the Lake’s End coffee shop said.

Maggie glanced back to the counter, and the ringing phone calling out to her. ‘Perhaps I should answer it,’ she said, placing her hands on her knees and standing. ‘They’re persistent. It might be serious.’

‘Make them wait,’ the man said.

Maggie’s eyes flicked from the man’s face to his large woollen overcoat then back again.

‘You’re
him
, aren’t you?’

He jumped out of his seat and stood between Maggie and the phone. ‘I’m who?’ he said. ‘Tell me. I’d like to know.’

‘Just let me answer the phone.’

‘No. Wait a little longer. I haven’t finished the story yet.’

Maggie stared at him, and he stared at the knife in her hand. Neither moved.

Then the phone stopped ringing and Maggie slowly sat back down. ‘Look. I’m scared. I… I don’t really care about the story.’

‘Well, you should.’

She cast a glance to the front door. ‘And I have stuff to do.’

‘Stuff to do? Like what? A family to look after?’

Maggie leaned back and held the knife close to her chest. ‘Okay, so I don’t have stuff to do. As long as you don’t come near me you can carry on, okay?’

The man sat down again. ‘Thank you.’

‘So go ahead. Tell me what you did next.’

‘Me?’

‘Okay, Patrick… Declan… whoever the guy was. What did he do after killing the Sandman?’

‘Oh, the Sandman wasn’t dead.’

‘No?’

‘Only out cold.’

‘So what did he do to him?’

‘Tell me, Maggie, what would you do to someone who had bought your soul when you were little more than a child, had ravaged your mind with mind-altering drugs and twisted psychotherapy, had planted nightmares into your mind and then made video games out of those nightmares – nightmares that made you feel so hateful towards yourself you wanted to end your life but you were too much of a coward to do anything about it?’

Maggie said nothing.

‘Come on! What would you do?’

Maggie shrugged. ‘I… I guess I’d want to kill them.’

‘Just kill them. Is that all?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You wouldn’t just want to kill them, would you? You’d want to make them suffer like you did.’

‘I’m not sure I would, as it goes. And anyway, how exactly would you do that?’

‘Well, you could hurt the thing they loved the most.’

Maggie gave a serious, measured nod. ‘Yeah. I can see that. But how? I mean, what did you do? I mean, what happened next?’

A smile bared the man’s teeth. ‘Lots of questions, Maggie. Let me answer them.’

He placed the lighter in the middle of the table, carefully balancing it on its end, and drew breath.

‘Patrick dragged the Sandman into the games room and strapped him to the seat in the WishPhixxer pod – just like the Sandman had done to him. Then he went into the kitchen.’

‘The kitchen?’ Maggie said.

‘Yes. To get a knife.’

‘A knife?’

‘Yes.’

‘But he didn’t kill him with it?’

‘He didn’t think of that at the time.’ The man laughed. ‘Then again, he didn’t need to; he had a much better idea.’

‘So what did he do with the knife?’

‘He felt behind his head. It took a while, but he found the pimple at the top of his neck, and took the knife to it.’

‘Ugh!’ Maggie grimaced.

‘Yes, it was messy, but not really painful. He’d stopped feeling pain by then.’

‘So he took it out?’

‘Yes. And there was a microwave oven in the kitchen. He switched it on and put his head close to the door.’

‘No headache?’

‘No headache.’

‘So it was all true?’

‘Maggie. Everything I’ve told you is true.’

‘So tell me what he did to this Sandman guy.’

‘He hadn’t thought things through so well – he wasn’t in a fit mental state to do that – so he just told the Sandman what he thought would scare him the most at the time. He told him he was going to burn the house down with him in it, and asked him whether he wanted to make a last confession.’

‘And did he?’

‘Oh, yes.’ The man glowered across the table to Maggie. ‘He talked about the biggest regret of his life.’

‘Which was?’

‘I’ll come to that. The Sandman was too calm for Patrick’s liking. Patrick wanted him to suffer, to cry and beg for forgiveness and mercy. But he wouldn’t. Perhaps he thought he could still somehow control Patrick and talk his way out of it. But no. Patrick found his plastic bottle of gasoline and started splashing it around the drapes and the carpet and the base of the WishPhixxer pod – especially the WishPhixxer pod. And it was
such
a good feeling, knowing the contraption would soon turn to ash and broken glass. He felt like lighting it there and then and running off, but for once in his life he decided not to take the easy way out. He had to make the Sandman suffer – or rather, spend a little time
watching
him suffer.’

‘So?’

‘So they settled down for a talk. The Sandman had been quite strong and calm until Patrick started dousing the place with gasoline, probably thinking he was just going to get beaten up or even shot. But with that sweet smell teasing him he became almost delirious with fear – and that was when he spilled the contents of his soul right into Patrick’s lap. This is what happened next:’

—“I need to tell you something,” the Sandman said.

—“A confession?” Patrick asked.

—“I suppose it is, yes”, the Sandman replied.

—Patrick said, “Then go ahead,” and put on his most sympathetic frown.

—“You know the reason I was attracted to taking on your case?”

—“How would I know that?” Patrick asked him.

—“You know,” he said, “so many children simply don’t realize what their parents sacrificed for them. They’re ungrateful until it’s too late to say sorry. Behind all the bravado of independence they want to please their parents, but they put it off, thinking their parents will be there forever. And you, Declan, you were like that as a child. You never gave a second’s thought to how your parents slaved away, what they could have had but did without for the sake of your happiness. And that reminded me of my daughter.”

—“You have a daughter?” Patrick said.

—He nodded. “At least, I
did
have a daughter. I haven’t seen her for years. We fell out, you see. I know where she works. I have her phone number and I’ve wanted to ring her a thousand times. And I guess whether she owes me an apology is irrelevant. The truth is,
I owe her one
– a damn big one.”

—“Why’s that?” Patrick asked. Then he saw tears running down the Sandman’s cheeks, and that can tickle no matter how upset you are so Patrick almost untied him. But he didn’t.

—“I used to think she was so ungrateful,” the Sandman said.

—“Ungrateful for what?”

—He sniffled a little. “We gave her the best of everything. She had the best education money could buy, went all through college with top grades, then got to medical school and excelled again. We thought she was going to follow in my footsteps. And then one day she came to see me. She broke down and said she couldn’t carry on with her studies anymore. She said she wanted to drop out – drop out of the rat race.”

At that moment, as the man in the coffee shop paused for breath, Maggie shifted uncomfortably in her seat.

‘What did you say was the Sandman’s real name?’ she said. ‘Did you say he was a doctor?’

‘I haven’t finished!’ the man in the oversize coat said. ‘I’m telling you about the Sandman and his daughter.’

‘Okay, okay,’ Maggie said. ‘Carry on.’

‘Right. When he spoke about his daughter like that Patrick could all see the love and remorse and desire in his sad eyes.’

—“You know,” the Sandman said, “she could have been doing well for herself by now. She could have been doing good as a physician – or something else in medicine – enjoying a fulfilling career relieving suffering and earning a decent living for herself too. You know what she wanted to do instead?”

—Patrick told the Sandman he hadn’t a clue.

—“She told me she wanted to write,” the Sandman said. “She wanted to become some big shot novelist. I begged her and begged her, then when she wouldn’t listed to sense – at least what I thought was sense at the time – I tried to tell her I simply wouldn’t tolerate it, that no daughter of mine was going to be poor and that was an end to it. But she told me it was her life; that I’d controlled her all her life and she wasn’t going to let me do it anymore, that she had to make her own mistakes.”

—Patrick nodded to him, but said nothing more, leading him on to continue tying his own noose.

‘Wait!’ Maggie said, her lips trembling and her eyes glistening. ‘This has gone on far enough. Who the hell are you?’

‘But, I keep telling you,’ the man said, his voice straining. ‘I don’t know who I am!’ The last words were shouted, and the man slammed his fist on the table.

The cigarette lighter fell over. Maggie flinched.

And the knife fell to the floor.

It bounced on its rubber handle and came to rest a few feet away.

For a second they both stared at it. Then Maggie fell down towards it.

Before she reached it the man lunged over and kicked it away. It scraped along the tiled floor and clonked against the far wall.

Maggie got up and started to run, but the man grabbed her arm, pulling her back to the table.

‘I still haven’t finished!’ he shouted.

‘But I’m scared.’ Maggie’s face now wrinkled up and a watery streak crossed each cheek. ‘Please let me go.’

‘No. I need you to listen.’

Maggie gave a few frenzied nods.

‘You know what the Sandman said after that?’ the man said. ‘He told me his daughter spent her evenings writing pap that never sold and her days working at the Lake’s End coffee shop. He said she could have had a career and a husband and a family but she has none of that because of her obsession with writing, with finding that one story that changes her life.

‘And you know what else, Maggie? His biggest regret isn’t that you never got that career or husband or family – it isn’t even that he stupidly blamed you for his break up with your mother. His biggest regret is that he lost contact with you and was too pig-headed to call you for these last few years and admit he was wrong, that he knew after a while you’d done the right thing in following your dream, by doing what made
you
happy instead of trying to do what would have made your parents happy.’

Maggie started tugging to escape. The man grabbed her other arm and pulled her close across the table.

And then the phone on the counter started ringing again.

Maggie wrestled one arm free and slapped the man’s face. She scratched his arm but he held on, now starting to grin. She picked up a sugar bowl and rammed it towards his face, the sugar cascading over the table and onto the floor like a freak snowstorm. He let go of her to put up a protective hand. As the bowl smashed into him Maggie stepped back, stumbling and falling on the floor. The man leapt over the table and held her down with the weight of his body.

‘That’s my father ringing, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘He’s been trying to warn me.’

‘I reckon you’re right.’

Maggie grunted, still not giving up the struggle. ‘So you didn’t kill him?’

‘Like I told you, that wouldn’t have been punishment enough for what he did. Don’t you agree? Knowing that his daughter not only will never have that career or husband or family – or even that hit novel – but also that she hated him so much she wouldn’t even answer the phone or call him back. And of course, knowing that he’ll never again hear the voice of the daughter he loves so much.’

The man pulled two luggage straps out of his pocket. He let one fall to the floor and tied Maggie’s wrists together with the other, pulling it tightly as she screamed and kicked out at his legs. He pulled her down onto her knees, picked up the second strap, and dragged her along to the end of the table. As she continued to cry out the second strap was whipped around both the first strap and the table leg, locking her to it. She slid her arms down to the bottom of the table leg but it was bolted to the floor.

‘Oh, no! Please, Patrick – Declan – whoever you want to be. I haven’t done you any harm. You can’t…’

The man held her chin in his hand like a delicate wine glass. ‘I’m sorry, Maggie. I know it’s not your fault; you’re just collateral damage. You
do
know that, don’t you? It’s your father who has to suffer.’

The man stood up and pulled the clear plastic bottle from his coat pocket, then crouched down in front of her. ‘I know it’s not fair.’ He could see the furrows and wrinkles deepening with the fear of what was about to happen. ‘It’s just something I have to do,’ he said.