‘How about Fishy?’ she asked. Adam’s eyes met hers again and he shook his head, just once. Daisy’s face broke open into a grin. ‘No, you’re right, that’s a silly name. How about Ploppy?’ This time Adam’s smile stretched to his lips. It seemed to make the whole park light up. He shook his head again. ‘Wonky-Butt,’ said Daisy, giggling. ‘Wonky-Butt the Wonder Horse.’
Adam opened his mouth and Daisy leant towards him, almost sliding off her horse. He was going to speak! He never got the chance, though, as more voices bubbled up from close by, angry, panicked shouts.
Daisy turned to see the others traipsing into Fursville. Then she noticed what they were carrying, and she didn’t need the ice cubes to tell her that there was someone inside the sack. It wriggled and shook and screamed and bucked, the four of them struggling to hold it. Cal was at the front, his arms locked around the man’s head. Brick had the middle and Chris and Jade the legs.
The sack lurched hard and Cal dropped it, the man’s head thumping to the floor where it continued to shake wildly. She heard Cal swear. He hefted the man’s head up again and they all waddled off towards the pavilion like some weird caterpillar. Daisy sat up straight, wondering what to do. She had an idea where they were taking the man, and what they were going to do with him.
‘Do you want to have a walk?’ she said. Adam shook his head and hugged his horse even tighter than before. Daisy nodded. It was probably better that he didn’t see. ‘Well, shall I leave you here for five minutes? Will you be okay?’
Adam didn’t reply. His eyes had taken on that glassy, lifeless sheen. Daisy didn’t like it, it made him look not quite real. Once again she thought of that scream, of another mouth inside Adam’s own, howling like a banshee. She grabbed the pole and swung herself carefully off the horse, walking over to him.
‘I won’t be long,’ she said, stretching up on her tiptoes so she could run her hand up and down his back. ‘Don’t move, okay? You’re safe here, but stay on your horse. And if you need me, just call out in your head, okay? I’ll hear you.’
It seemed a strange thing to say, and yet perfectly natural at the same time. He didn’t respond. Daisy stood there for a moment more, then clambered off the carousel and ran after the others. By the time she caught up with them they were shoving the frenzied sack-man through the chained fire exit. He was writhing so much that it seemed likely he’d pull the doors off their hinges.
‘Just keep his legs still,’ shouted Cal from inside. ‘For God’s sake, he’s gonna kill himself at this rate.’
The man howled. There was no pain in that noise though, or fear. There was nothing but fury. Jade threw herself down onto the man’s feet, hugging them as Cal pulled him into the pavilion.
‘Little help?’ yelled Cal. Brick muttered as he ducked through, reeling back as the man kicked out then crawling awkwardly inside. Chris followed, struggling to get his bulk into the gap.
Daisy waited until the shouts had faded a little before entering. When her eyes had adjusted to the gloom she saw that Cal and Brick were dragging the man up the shadowed corridor.
‘In here,’ Brick said, kicking open a door halfway down. Daisy followed them as they hurled the man inside, dumping him roughly against the far wall.
‘Go!’ yelled Cal, everyone stampeding from the room, almost tripping over one another. The sack-man was already clambering up, looking like a headless, limbless torso in the dark room. He bounced off a hatch in the wall and lumbered towards the corridor. Brick waited for everyone to scramble out before pulling the door shut. The man thumped against it, hard enough to shake the dust from the ceiling. His savage growls were barely muffled by the wood.
‘Now what?’ said Jade, panting. ‘How do we lock it?’
Brick glared at her, but he didn’t answer.
‘We can use more sack,’ said Cal, digging in his pockets. ‘Move.’
The others stood to one side as he tied a strip of something round the door handle, then looped the other end round a pipe that ran down the side of the door, knotting it twice. It didn’t look particularly secure to Daisy, but it seemed to make the others relax. They stood back, collapsing against the walls.
‘You ready to tell us what your plan is yet?’ Cal said, panting. ‘How’re we supposed to get anything out of him when he’s like that?’
‘You see the hatch in there?’ said Brick, wiping his hand over his face. ‘Dumb waiter. There’s a shaft leading from it right up to the kitchen. Come on.’
He led the way through the lobby, up the stairs and past the entrance to the restaurant. It was freezing here, an icy draught blowing through the crack between the double doors of Waves like it was the middle of winter. Daisy shivered, pressing herself against Cal as they walked past the restaurant.
‘You wanna check on the twins?’ asked Cal.
‘No,’ Brick grunted. The corridor up here was a small one, with only one other door. Brick pushed through it into another dark hallway, then took the first opening on the right. Daisy had to squint against the blade of sunlight which cut through a broken board on the window, her eyes gradually adjusting.
The kitchen was huge, the metal surfaces and industrial ovens covered in grime – feathers and bird droppings everywhere. The tiled floor was cracked and, incredibly, little clusters of sea grass had planted themselves in the dirt, stretching tiny green fingers up towards the window. In a decade or so the whole park would probably be lost in a forest of green, like a fairy tale.
‘Like Sleeping Beauty’, she whispered to herself.
Brick made his way over to the far wall, to a small, square door that sat right in the middle of it – the other end of the dumb waiter.
‘You ready?’ he asked nobody in particular. He opened the hatch, the rusted hinges putting up a fight but finally giving in. Inside was nothing but darkness, and Brick stuck his head into it. Daisy expected to see a frenzied face emerging from the shaft below, jaws snapping shut around the boy’s throat. He cleared his throat, speaking into the bottomless gloom of the dumb waiter. ‘Hello? Can you hear me?’
A noise rose up from the room directly below, a rattling clank. Daisy guessed it was probably the guy trying to break out of the storeroom. Sound travelled perfectly up the dumb waiter, as though the man were in this very kitchen.
‘Hello?’ Brick said again. ‘I know you can hear me, jackass, so say something.’
‘You want me to do this?’ said Cal.
‘Why? ’Cos you’re the nice guy?’ Brick snapped back. He held his ground for a second then stepped away, holding his hands up. ‘All yours.’
‘Listen,’ Cal called out, sticking his head through the door. Daisy leant in to better hear what he was saying. ‘We’re not going to hurt you, we just want to talk.’
More clattering, then the squeal of a door opening. At first Daisy thought the man had managed to get out. Then the sound of deep, rasping breaths ghosted up the shaft.
‘Hello?’ The voice was weak, and old. ‘Who’s there? Why are you doing this?’
‘There’s water in the tap,’ said Cal, turning back to Brick. ‘Isn’t there?’
Brick nodded. The rasping faded, replaced by the distant sound of pipes rattling. The man returned after a minute or so, panting hard as if he’d just downed six pints in one go.
‘Thank you,’ he wheezed. ‘Look, please, whoever you are, I don’t have anything, I’m not rich, I just have a farm, nothing else.’
‘We don’t want anything from you,’ Cal shouted. ‘We only want to know why you tried to kill us.’
Silence, even his breathing faded.
‘What?’ he said eventually. ‘I never tried to kill you, I don’t even know who you are.’
‘You don’t remember what just happened?’ Cal went on. ‘You don’t remember us locking you in the room.’
‘I . . . I . . .’ Daisy imagined him taking a good look around him, trying to work out where he was. ‘I don’t know how I got here,’ he stuttered.
‘What??
?s the last thing you remember?’ asked Cal.
‘Being in the car,’ he answered hesitantly. ‘In the boot.’
‘And before that?’
‘Um, I was at home, working. It’s Friday, isn’t it?’
‘Dude, he doesn’t even know what day it is,’ said Chris. Cal hushed him with a hand.
‘Then what?’
‘I, er, I don’t know. I don’t know.’ He was sobbing now – big, gulping, metallic cries. ‘It’s just black. You’ve drugged me.’
‘Ask him his name,’ said Daisy quietly. She couldn’t read anything from this man, there was nothing of his life in the ice cubes in her head. Because he isn’t one of us, she thought. ‘Tell him your name too.’
‘We haven’t drugged you,’ said Cal. ‘We’re trying to help you. I’m Cal, by the way. What’s your name?’
‘Maltby,’ said the man. ‘Edward Maltby. Ted.’
‘OK, Ted. I need you to really think,’ said Cal, and there was something calming about his voice. ‘Who is the last person you remember seeing?’
More thumps, but this time they came from behind them, from the restaurant. Daisy glanced at the kitchen door, expecting to see Rilke stroll in. Instead she heard the girl walking down the stairs. At least she was okay, back on her feet after the explosion. Daisy was relieved.
‘I don’t know,’ the man repeated, the shaft giving his voice a robotic quality. ‘Please just let me go, I have a son, he . . .’
Silence, everyone crowding round the dumb waiter door to see what came next.
‘Wait, I remember him, my son, coming back to the house. Is he okay? Is he here? He hasn’t been well, he’s had this headache . . .’ Another pause. ‘That’s right, he was shouting about how it had gone, and . . . And then I don’t know, then there was nothing.’
‘So the douchebag with the gun was his son,’ muttered Brick. ‘Makes sense.’
‘You’re sure there’s nothing else, Ted?’ asked Cal. ‘Nothing you can remember?’
‘I . . . I think I must have been dreaming,’ said Maltby, still weeping. ‘I saw something, in the darkness. There was something bad there, I can’t remember, but . . . It was just bad, it needed to . . . I don’t know, why are you doing this?’
‘What was it?’ asked Cal. ‘What did you see?’
The man replied but his words were garbled. Brick leant in, shoulder to shoulder with Cal, both of them peering down into the darkness.
‘What did he say?’ Brick asked.
‘Sssh,’ hissed Cal. Sure enough the man spoke again, his whimper like a dog’s, curling up at the end into a snarl.
‘What the hell?’ said Jade. ‘Is he going feral again?’
‘It’s Rilke,’ said Daisy, seeing a flash of something red and horrid inside an ice cube. ‘She’s with him.’
The eerie haunted-house squeal of a door rose up the dumb waiter. The man roared, a scream of rage that sent everyone skittering back from the wall. It was just as well, because the noise that followed would have deafened them – the unmistakable crack of a gunshot.
Brick
Fursville, 2.27 p.m.
Brick and Cal looked at each other as the gunshot echoed around the room. Then they turned and ran.
Brick took the lead, his long legs giving him the advantage as he thundered down the stairs and across the lobby. He smashed through the door marked ‘Staff Only’, skidding to a halt when he saw Rilke in the corridor. Her eyes were gleaming, the brightest thing in the dusk.
She was holding the gun.
‘What the hell have you done?’ he yelled. She stared back, not blinking. The barrel of the pistol was smoking, the air thick with the bitter scent of cordite. Brick started forward again, reaching the stockroom door and looking inside. He felt his stomach churn, his legs shaking so much he had to lean against the door jamb or fall face-first onto the corpse that lay inside. A ragged hole had been sunk into the old man’s chest and blood had pooled there.
Clattering feet, then Cal was by his side again. He made a noise that was halfway between a gulp and a dry heave, then whipped round.
‘Don’t look, Daisy,’ he said. ‘Stay there, stay there.’
Chris barged between Cal and Brick.
‘You killed him,’ he said.
Brick looked at Rilke again, the girl’s face set in stone.
‘I said what the hell have you done?’ he shouted. He took a step towards her, stopping only when she lifted the gun, pointing that smoking barrel right at his forehead.
‘That’s enough, Rilke,’ said Cal. ‘Christ, what do you think you’re doing? Put that thing down.’
‘Answer, dammit,’ said Brick, the emotions stewing in his gut, ready to make him do something stupid. ‘Why did you do that? He was talking to us, he was about to tell us something.’
‘No,’ said Rilke. ‘He wasn’t.’
‘How do you know?’ Brick went on. ‘You weren’t even there.’
He felt a hand on his arm, Cal’s fingers squeezing. He shrugged him away, taking another step towards Rilke. How many shots have been fired? He tried to work it out. One on the beach, two outside, I think, then another one now. Two bullets left? She’d only need one, though, to put a hole where his brain once sat.
‘I reloaded,’ she answered his unspoken question for him, offering him a smile as sharp and as dangerous as a scalpel blade. ‘Cal was kind enough to bring a big, big box of bullets with him.’
‘Rilke, I know you’ve been through a lot,’ said Cal in that infuriatingly calm tone of his. ‘I know how you must be feeling. We all feel it. But he was safe in there, we’d locked him in. He couldn’t hurt us.’
‘I know,’ said Rilke, her entire body motionless except for her eyes, which slid round towards Cal. ‘That isn’t why I did it.’
‘Why, then?’ asked Cal.
‘Because he wasn’t one of us,’ she said. ‘And anyone who isn’t one of us doesn’t deserve to live.’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Jade.
‘But I do,’ she said, lowering the gun but keeping her finger on the trigger. ‘I know exactly what I’m talking about. And you do too, Daisy.’
Brick glanced back to where Daisy stood, wreathed in darkness, by the door. He could see her silhouetted head shaking.
‘Leave her out of this,’ said Cal. ‘Just give me the gun, okay, then we can talk about it.’
He moved towards her, his hand out, but Rilke took a step back, her trigger finger twitching.
‘None of you understand what’s going on,’ she said. ‘It’s pathetic. But we know, don’t we, Daisy? We know the truth.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Rilke,’ said Daisy. ‘I don’t know anything.’
‘You do know,’ Rilke went on, still retreating down the corridor. ‘You’ve seen it. The fire inside them, inside us.’
‘Fire?’ said Brick. ‘You’re off your head.’
‘Please, Rilke,’ sobbed Daisy. ‘Please give Cal the gun, please. I don’t want anyone to get hurt.’
‘We can’t have them here,’ Rilke said. Them? Brick felt a finger of ice run up his back, settling at the base of his skull. ‘They’ll try to stop us.’
She was still retreating, stopping at the door that led down to the basement. She reached out and turned the handle. Brick’s entire body tensed, ready to fly at her.
‘Don’t you dare,’ he growled. ‘I’ll kill you.’
‘Dare what?’ asked Cal. ‘What’s in there?’
Brick tuned him out, tuned them all out. His head was a furnace, nothing but white heat and noise. He started forward, not even stopping when Rilke raised the gun again, that unblinking black eye staring right at him. She was crazy but there was no way she’d shoot him, no way she’d pull that trigger.
The corridor flashed, the shot making his eardrums ring. It was like a cannon had gone off. He crashed to his knees, his hands up to his face, expecting blood. But everything was there, where it should be.
/>
‘The next one won’t miss,’ said Rilke, the same thing she’d said right before blowing that guy’s face off. She had pushed open the door and was now treading carefully down the stairs, never taking her eyes off him.
‘Please,’ Brick said, his voice breaking. He crawled to the top of the stairs on his hands and knees, hearing Lisa’s panicked cries below, becoming less and less human as Rilke closed in. ‘Please don’t do this, don’t hurt her, she didn’t do anything to you.’
‘Not yet,’ Rilke said. ‘But she will, if she gets the chance. They all will. It’s us against them, now, but we’re so much better than them.’ She laughed, a lunatic chuckle that rose from the darkness of the steps. ‘We’re creatures of fire, now. And what does fire do best? It purges.’
Brick was crying, everything that had been boiling inside him now escaping like steam. The tears dropped onto his hands, impossibly hot, and through the blur he saw Rilke kick away the pole he’d used to wedge the basement door closed. Lisa was thumping herself against it, howling, screeching.
They couldn’t be the last sounds she’d ever make, they couldn’t be. He wanted to hear her speak again, even if it was just to insult him; he wanted to hear that laugh, the one he’d always found so annoying but which made him smile when she wasn’t looking; he wanted to feel her lips on his, the warmth of her body.
‘Rilke,’ he sobbed. ‘I’m begging you.’
‘Don’t,’ she called back up the stairs. ‘You’re better than that now. You’re more than that.’
And with that she opened the basement door. Brick watched as a shape flew out of it on all fours, thumping head first into the wall. He watched as Rilke levelled the gun at Lisa’s head. He watched as she pulled the trigger. Then he closed his eyes and let the grief consume him.
Past the wracking sobs, past the thunder in his ears, he heard Rilke walk back up the stairs. She put a hand on his shoulder.
‘You’ll thank me for this,’ she said.
Then she was gone.
Daisy
Fursville, 2.48 p.m.