The Man Who Built the World (32 page)

‘Having a nice little chat, are we?’ Red cocked the gun, then took a seat facing the door, the gun resting on his lap. Liana and Ian sat off to his right, on the first of two sofas at diagonal angles to the fire which crackled low in the grate.

‘What now, Red?’

Red eyed Ian with the same suspicion as before, but didn’t let his words describe the way he felt.

‘H
e’s not here. If he’s with the other one as she says, we have two choices. We could go look for her, or –’ he stood up suddenly and pointed the gun directly at Liana’s head. ‘
Where did she go
?’

‘I told you, I don’t know!’

Red held the gun steady for a moment. Maybe he could sense she didn’t know from the tremble of her lips, or the terror in her eyes. She was too frightened to move, too frightened even to cry. He nodded and sat back down again.

‘Or we sit here and wait.’ He absently rubbed one finger up and down the barrel of the gun.
‘To me, that sounds the best option. She has to come back sooner or later, right?’

Ian nodded.
‘We wait here then.’

‘I’ve got forever.
And if that’s how long it takes –’

Ian shifted in his seat.

‘Hey!’ Red lifted the gun, aiming it lazily in the direction of the couch. ‘Don’t get up. Stay right there, both of you.’

The gleam of madness had returned to his eyes.
Liana saw a dribble of sweat drip down over Ian’s nose.

Red crossed one leg over the other and leaned back in the chair.
‘And while we’ve got a little time on our hands, how’s about you tell me just why exactly you thought it necessary to steal my baby?’ He looked at Liana. ‘Come on, be honest here. Please be honest. Otherwise I might just blow your fucking head off and be done with it.’

Liana’s mouth worked silently.
Her mouth felt dry, parched, and the thudding of her heart seemed to be pressing against the sides of her throat.

‘What’s the matter?
Nothing to say? Well, you’d best think of something, eh?’ He brought the gun up, pointing it at her stomach. Liana’s breath caught, and tears slid from her eyes to roll down her pallid, porcelain face.

Red chuckled, his laugh bleak and fractured like the batteries still whirring inside a broken remote control car, the little motors still spinning even when the thing itself was finished.
The laugh of a desperate man. The laugh of a man who had nothing left to lose.

‘Come on then, I’m waiting.’

8

Rachel seemed to stumble every five or six metres, tripping on potholes and splashing muddy water up her legs. The light didn’t get any closer and the rain just got worse and worse. Her hair had slicked to her face like sticky seaweed, and if she hadn’t felt so wet and grim she would have sat down and given up all together.

The lane angled down towards a distant river, the roar of churning water marking its steep passage down a rocky slope towards the Tamer estuary.
Plymouth couldn’t be far off, she thought, ten miles perhaps, as the crow flew.

She would much rather be there.
A real city, full of real people, and cars, and noise, and all the other things Rachel loved about cities but hated about the countryside. Street lighting, cash machines and McDonalds drive–thru restaurants. A murky, soggy moor in the middle of nowhere just couldn’t compete.

‘
I’ll get Matt and get out of here,’ she muttered to herself, hobbling towards the distant light. ‘If I ever get there.’ She paused for a second to rest her aching foot, and peered up into the grey darkness. ‘Goddamn it, how can it be misty as hell and rain at the same time?
Jesus
Christ
.’

Her thoughts turned to Matt, really to help her forget the pain in her ankle and her wrecked car, now some hundred yards behind her.
How would he react to her coming here? Would he want to see her? She shook her head, not wanting to think about it too much. They had not parted on good terms. The rift that had been growing between them for several months had been widened by his sister’s sudden death, when the tragedy should have pulled them together. Their parting had been that of two people who didn’t expect to see each other again, no matter what Rachel had felt at the time. It hadn’t been
see you soon
. It had been
goodbye.

She started off again, walking towards the distant light, wondering if she
was actually dead and this was the tunnel people talked about. The light at the end, arms reaching for her, pulling her through to some euphoric paradise on the other side, leaving all the rain and the misery behind.

Well, it’s a bloody long tunnel,
she thought.

The lane continued down towards the sound of rushing water.
The light seemed to move off to her right as an embankment rose to that side, huge and dark and smelling of peaty earth, and she realised the lane was curving around into some sort of carved-out area, like an old quarry, or an open-cast mine. The light came from in there.

She slowed her already snail-like pace even further as the light dropped out of sight behind the rise of the embankment, enveloping her in darkness.

‘Now it gets fun,’ she whispered to herself, unable to shake a sense of foreboding, the feeling that something unpleasant waited just around the corner.
What choice do I have?

The sound of the river had reached fever pitch.
Looking downhill into the blackness, Rachel was convinced she could see something glittering there. The river reflecting the light. There was only one light she had seen since she got here.

She moved closer to the tall embankment, now sheared off and held back by wire netting to allow for the lane.
It gave her comfort, something to use for a guide. If she lost her way she might wander out here all night. The air had got colder with the onset of heavy rain; a night caught out here would give her hypothermia.

With one hand on the wall of the embankment, she moved forward, trying to ignore the thick, muddy water dribbling down the steep slope and through her fingers.
She envisaged worms there, bugs –

She squeezed her eyes shut to block the thought from her mind, and when she opened them again a few seconds later a house stood in front of her.

Even close up, the outside light that had guided her here was hazy and indistinct through the fog, but she could see another light on in a downstairs window. Relief filled her. A black Nissan car sat in the driveway out the front of a garage, while a set of outbuildings nestled into the hollow to her right. Beyond the garage a little garden stretched away, and she didn’t doubt it led right down to the river.

She hobbled across the driveway towards the front door, which she could see from her va
ntage point stood slightly ajar.

The appeal of shelter or rest or at least a phone call to get help overrode the feeling of dread that filled her as she put one hand on the door and pushed it inwards.
She didn’t care anymore, she just wanted to get out of the rain.

She tried to raise her voice to shout for help, to make someone inside aware of her presence, but found the damp air had left her nothing but a bubbly croak, as though a slippery thing like a wet fish or a slug were wriggling at the back of her throat.
She took her chances, and limped forward into the room.

###

Bethany’s Diary,
Sept 10th, 1999

My child is almost due. I can feel it kicking sometimes, wanting to get out. Oh, if only I wanted it too.

Mother – I want to hate her, but much as I want to
, I can’t. She is right, right about everything despite the years of lies – came back to me after leaving me months alone. She’d been ill, she said, didn’t want to come near me for fear of what might happen. She lied, I think. She just couldn’t face me, didn’t know what to say.

Yesterday she came back.
She needed to speak with me, she said, needed to speak with me desperately, and today I went out to find her in the forest. We met up in the chapel, behind her grave.

We talked, and now she has gone, and the thought of having my child sickens me.
We left on bad terms, Mother and I, but I do not hate her for her words. I am thankful that she told me, thankful that at last the truth is out, even if it is a truth that blackens my heart to the bottom of my soul.

She could have lived.
She might have been weak, have struggled at times, may have had to steal a little soul from people now and then, but never enough to hurt them. Never enough to sadden them, cause them pain. She could have dealt with her mortal corruption had it not reached another level, a place from which there was no return, were her body and soul not violated and cheated. Her body didn’t fail her because of people’s words, and for this knowledge more than anything else, I ache to hate her.

I could have spoken.
I could have used my voice, been part of the world around me. I may have become ill more often than a normal child, may have been weak at times, but I could have lived as those around me lived.

I could have had a normal life.

I stayed silent at first because of instinct, because I was different from this world I lived in and because until I could learn to trust it I could never let myself become part of it. Later, I kept my silence through fear of what I might become should I break it, and my mother never told me otherwise.

You see, she couldn’t tell me.
The shame hung too heavy on her shoulders.

I can speak now, speak if I want, and in quiet corners I do, practicing the words aloud for the first time, rolling them over my tongue.
It is so different from the way I speak to Mother with my mind; the words feel big and fat and sometimes cumbersome, but other times elegant and graceful, as though I speak pure silk. A wonderful thing, is language . . .

Yes, I can talk now, should I choose.
Only now I find I have nothing to say.

Soon now, soon.
A couple of weeks more, maybe less. After my child is gone I will follow Mother. If I do not, I fear I will follow the same route into suffering that she followed before her merciful death. For my corruption is the same as hers.

Betrayal by our own kind.

9

The first second spent waiting in the murky darkness of the room seemed to last about an hour, the second a week, the third a month. Matt had no idea how he coped with the infinite passage of time as he waited in that place, only that somehow he did, crouched in the dark; that somehow the endless seconds passed. Unsure what he would do when the time came, which he knew it would, sooner or later, he could have had forever and his mind would have had no less chance to decide. He wanted the time gone, the moment come. He would let instinct guide him, aided by the ally of surprise, the only weapon he had left.

He would know what to do, just as he had known to come here, known that of all the places in the village he could have chosen this was the one, this tiny cottage standing on the outskirts of the village, tucked away down a short lane that almost hid it from view.

He hadn’t even seen it from the road, for of course no lights were on. Nobody was home yet. But they would be. Sooner or later they would come. And when they did, they would find him.

Waiting.

He concentrated. On making the time pass. On drawing his adversary closer. He concentrated, closing his eyes to focus.

10

Liana hadn’t told them everything.
Only about Gabrielle.

‘You talk rubbish, bitch,’ Red said, again waving the gun in Liana’s direction.
‘My baby has no power to do anything. You’re sick. You’re fucking sick.’ He glared at her, daring her to reply.

It was Ian that did.
‘Come on, Red! You’ve accepted just as I have that Gabrielle wasn’t quite . . . the same as us. That she was . . .
different
.’

‘Shut up, Ian!’
The gun waved again, making Ian freeze where he sat, on the verge of rising to his feet. Red’s eyes gleamed with something different: passion. ‘I don’t doubt that for a second! Gabrielle was . . . was
special
.’

‘And she was my wife.’

‘Come on, Ian. Don’t tell me you didn’t know what she was the first time you looked on her. She was perfect!’ Red’s face had turned light pink, the hard, leathery skin appearing soft beneath the ceiling light.

Ian rose to his feet, anger blooming in his face as Red continued to speak.