‘Huge, it was.’ His heart pounded as he struggled to correlate the images from last night: faces. White eyes. A monster the size of a whale. The way the creature had glided towards the house. Four men screaming in terror.
‘Tom, can you hear me?’
He realized she was gently shaking him. Maybe he’d been slipping into unconsciousness.
‘Say something to me, Tom, you’re frightening me.’
‘Helsvir,’ he managed to say. ‘Helsvir, the dragon . . . It was here. It saved you.’ A whirlpool of light spun faster and faster. ‘Helsvir killed the men that attacked you. And then Helsvir warned me to leave here.’ He licked his dry lips. ‘That’s what it said. Leave . . . never come back . . .’
TWENTY-SIX
‘Helsvir . . . I saw Helsvir.’
Tom opened his eyes. He’d been muttering the words over and over as he lay dazed on the bed.
‘Helsvir . . .’ He knew he should stop repeating the name now, only some impulse kept driving the creature’s name from his lips. ‘Helsvir . . . It warned me to leave. It’s going to kill me if I stay . . .’
As part of his diver’s training he’d taken plenty of first-aid courses. He knew the symptoms of concussion featured headaches, dizziness, loss of balance, confusion, seeing flashing lights, double vision . . . Boy-oh-boy, he was having plenty of those symptoms right now. The only element missing after the beating was pain. If anything, he felt unusually comfortable and was content to lie there, gazing at the sunlight flooding the room with gold.
Of course, he found himself repeating the word ‘Helsvir’. A symptom of the concussion? The dragon’s name from the Bekk family legend seemed to orbit the inside of his head. ‘Helsvir . . .’
‘What’s that?’ Nicola entered the room with a plateful of toast and a steaming cup. ‘Helsvir?’
‘I saw Helsvir last night.’ He spoke in the same matter-of-fact tone he’d use to say: I saw Chester last night.
Nicola put the toast and cup on the bedside table. ‘You gave me a scare a couple of hours ago. Your eyes suddenly went dull, like you couldn’t see anything; you started muttering. I couldn’t rouse you.’
‘Last night I saw the dragon. The one carved on the walls of your house.’
‘That’s an old legend.’
‘I saw it.’ The pulse in his neck fluttered. ‘The thing was the size of a truck. There are faces embedded in its body. Human faces. Dozens . . . and . . . and I remember your mother saying that a Viking god created the dragon out of human corpses.’
She rested her cool palm against his forehead. ‘I’m going to call an ambulance.’
‘Helsvir came out of the forest. He killed those men. I heard bones snapping, they were screaming, there’s blood in the gravel . . . Blood poured out of them all over the drive.’
‘Tom, I was there, remember? Nothing came out of the wood.’
‘It did.’
‘There’s no Helsvir.’ She smiled to reassure him. ‘I would have seen a big monster, wouldn’t I?’
‘There’ll be blood on the driveway . . . you’ll see. Masses of blood.’
‘You stay there, try to relax. I’m phoning for the ambulance.’
‘No . . . I’ll be fine. Just give me time to rest.’ His eyelids were so heavy . . . the heaviest things in the world . . .
Nicola walked towards the bedroom door.
‘Wait,’ he said in sleepy voice. ‘There are two facts you should know. Very important facts.’
‘Try and rest.’
‘Fact number one: I love you.’
She smiled. ‘You’ve told me.’
‘Fact number two.’ Tom pointed at her. ‘I’m going to marry you.’
TWENTY-SEVEN
Bolter had been running for hours. He’d been running so the monster that had slaughtered the low-life turds he called ‘friends’ wouldn’t mangle his bones, too.
Only when he was certain that he’d outrun that horror from the forest did he return home. Quickly, he scrambled upstairs, leaving muddy smears on the carpet.
‘Where’ve you been, babe?’ called Grandma from the kitchen. ‘I’ve been worried sick.’
‘Stop calling me babe!’ Bolter slammed the bedroom door behind him, then ripped his old comics from a drawer so he could reach his stash lickety-split. Bolter needed his ‘reality cure’ as he called them. His Buzz-Bang pills. Great for making the brain go BUZZ! and the heart go BANG!
‘Damn it. Only three left . . .’ His voice rose from a croak to the whine of an outraged child that had found only three presents under the Christmas tree. ‘Only three?’ Even so, he eagerly stuffed those dirty grey pills into his mouth.
He needed ’em; by Christ, he needed ’em! Last night at Mull-Rigg Hall he’d loved kicking freaking Tom Westonby . . . The way his blood had burst out of his skull like a bomb. Ha-ha!
But the nightmare on legs had arrived. A huge ugly thing that was all legs, arms and heads had glided out of the forest. Pug was a big guy, a giant, but the monster had mashed him to death. Bolter had heard the powerful man’s bones crackle and snap. Within seconds, the animal had spilled Nix and Crafty’s blood on to the driveway. Nicola Bitch-Bekk and Westonby had watched the murders. They’d be smirking right now. The bastards.
The speed ripped through Bolter’s arteries to his brain. The dangerous blend of toxic chemicals made his heart race; it also granted him blistering insight into the monster attack last night. He picked up a can of deodorant before rushing to the bedroom mirror.
Straight away he clicked into his fantasy role of TV reporter. ‘Breaking news . . .’ The ugly red mountain range of spots and blisters on his face seemed to pulsate as he spoke into his pretend microphone – the aerosol can. ‘Breaking news . . . It is now widely known that Nicola Bekk and Tom-Ass Westonby are responsible for the murder of three Danby-Mask gentlemen. Their guilt is certain, one zillion per cent certain.’ His voice raced faster as the drug accelerated his nervous system. ‘The only question now is what kind of punishment Bekk and Westonby will suffer. Because surely there will cometh the divine instrument of revenge.’
Bolter loved those words; they were so clever and true: he even saw them spray out of his mouth in a shining stream of light. He added, in a delighted gurgle: ‘Bekk and Westonby will suffer terrible injury and death. Because, I . . . your hero reporter . . . will be that divine instrument of revenge!’ He burbled with speed-driven laughter.
That’s so damn good. That’s brilliant. The drug inflamed both his paranoia and the powerful delusion that he was nothing less than superhuman. Oh, yes, he’d enjoy getting back at those two freaks: Westonby and Bekk. ‘I’ll bloody them adroitly!’
Using the word adroitly made Bolter laugh louder. OK, he knew deep down he was losing control, and that these illegal drugs would eventually kill him. So freaking what! His death would be glorious!
‘Babe,’ his grandma nervously called from downstairs. ‘Babe, are you alright up there?’
My pills . . . my Buzz-Bang. I need more. They make me strong. They make me indestructible.
‘Babe, I’m worried about you.’
‘Grandma!’ he shouted as he stared at his complexion of ruin in the mirror. ‘Lend me some money.’ He was broke; he needed to buy more of his magic medicine.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t.’
‘OK. Give me some money.’ He grinned at his reflection and raised the pretend microphone to his mouth. ‘I need cash . . . because this reporter is about to go to war.’
TWENTY-EIGHT
Tom Westonby awoke again at noon. This time he managed to get out of bed. Even so, he was extremely unsteady on his feet. He managed to reach the wall mirror by holding on to the furniture. When he stood at the mirror it was as disconcerting as standing on a boat’s deck in rough weather. Only keeping a tight grip on the chest of drawers prevented him from staggering.
The face in the mirror didn’t look pretty. His dark, curly hair appeared the same as it had yesterday morning. His face
, however, bulged with swellings. A bloody split in the centre of his bottom lip was eye-catching to say the least. A sticking plaster covered one eyebrow. Apart from those two new features, there were plenty of scrapes on his skin with an equal number of bruises. Those thugs were hell-bent on kicking my head right off my shoulders, he told himself grimly. I’m going to make sure they get the same kind of punishment.
Even as he pictured himself hunting down his attackers, he remembered the events of last night. Hadn’t he witnessed how the men were attacked by the creature from the wood? It seemed to glide like a shark out of the darkness. The four men had screamed as it pounced. The sound of breaking bones filled his head again. He remembered the blood: spurts of crimson splashing down on to the driveway.
‘Helsvir,’ he said, murmuring the name. Helsvir, guardian of the Bekk family down through the ages. That’s mythology, he told himself. Even in remote parts of England like this you don’t find real dragons.
Steadying himself, he raised his splayed hand to the mirror. ‘How many fingers am I holding up?’
His reflection chuckled. ‘Hundreds of fingers.’
‘Concussion . . . bad concussion,’ he murmured. ‘I should go back to bed.’
‘Just what the doctor ordered,’ his reflection said, laughing.
Yet the image of the men being killed out there on the drive blazed so brightly. OK, he must have hallucinated. No avenging monster had broken those men into little bits. So, if they hadn’t been killed, they must have scarpered when Tom appeared; that meant there’d be no sign of a struggle outside . . . no blood, either.
‘Nicola?’
He listened. Nobody seemed to be moving around the house. Perhaps after making sure he was alright Nicola had gone home? Another memory surfaced through a confused mess of dazed thoughts. Didn’t I tell her I was going to marry her? He tottered across the room. Or did I hallucinate about that, too?
‘Dragons and surprise wedding proposals . . . That’s what I call hallucinating.’
The walk downstairs turned out to be something of an expedition. Tom couldn’t move properly. What had seemed like the prospect of simple detective-work, to check if bloodstains were present on the drive, became an ordeal. More than once he stumbled down a couple of stairs at a time. He only prevented himself from flying head first by keeping a desperate grip on the bannister.
This isn’t a good idea, he told himself. I should be back in bed.
No. He had a mission now. Find the blood. Prove that you saw men die. The details had been so vivid. The way their bones had cracked so loudly. Come to think of it, wouldn’t an animal as big as that have gouged up the driveway? The thing must have weighed a ton at least.
He paused in the doorway. ‘Of course, you know what this means,’ he whispered to himself. ‘You’re trying to find evidence that a Viking monster killed people. Go ahead. Report a dragon to the police. They’re going to say you’re crazy.’
A blustery wind attacked the forest, raising a hiss from those millions of fluttering leaves. Meanwhile, Tom Westonby concentrated on keeping his balance as he stepped outside.
Pools of blood . . . gravel drenched in crimson . . . the gore had been everywhere. So where’s the blood? He frowned. The stones were a pristine white. Not so much as a single speckle of red – at least, none that he could see. He stopped where he’d seen the big guy being mashed into the ground by the monstrous beast.
Tom found an even expanse of gravel. The stones formed a smooth, flat surface. His car sat outside the garage in its usual place. Doors shut. Drops of water stood in beads on the roof. In the road itself, outside the gates, more pools of water stretched across the tarmac.
There’s been rain, he told himself. Rain washed away the blood.
But the way that heavy creature had hurtled up the drive? The sheer bulk of the thing would have scuffed up gravel into heaps; its feet would have gouged holes. The men had been roughly dragged across the ground. The weight of their bodies would have torn furrows.
Then he noticed something significant. The driveway wasn’t as it should be. Visibly, it was different from before. A change had taken place since yesterday.
He murmured, ‘It’s too neat. Too level. Someone’s raked it smooth.’
His head was spinning like fury. Yet he marvelled at the neatness of the drive. It always possessed clear, if shallow, ruts made by his car’s wheels. The ruts were invariably there. He remembered how they led from the gates to the garage. Now they’d gone.
Somebody had carefully raked the gravel. The surface of the driveway was now perfectly smooth.
Then the clincher. He inhaled deeply. ‘Disinfectant. I can smell it. Someone’s been washing the stones.’
TWENTY-NINE
‘Have I been asleep long?’ Tom Westonby stood by the bed. His sense of balance functioned. The headache had vanished. He felt a million dollars.
Nicola checked her watch. ‘Almost twenty-four hours.’
‘I’ve been asleep all that time?’ He was stunned.
‘There were times I thought you’d died. I wanted to call an ambulance.’
‘I’m glad you didn’t. The hospital would know I’d been assaulted; they’d have called in the police.’
‘Those thugs deserve to go to prison.’
‘What they deserve, Nicola, is a visit from me.’
‘Before you go to war, can I tempt you to breakfast?’ She smiled. ‘I brought some of my mother’s home-cured bacon.’
‘Thanks. I’m starving.’
‘I’m pleased.’
‘Pleased that I’m hungry?’
‘I’m pleased you’re like your old self again.’
‘I’m always hungry.’ He grinned despite the sore cut on his bottom lip where a boot had broken the skin. ‘You’ll have to get used to my rampant appetite.’
‘And why should I get used to that?’ She spoke in a light, playful way, though clearly she wanted to know if a deeper meaning lay behind his suggestion.
‘I’m a glutton at heart. Right now, I could stick your family’s big old dragon on a slice of bread, squirt on a bottle of mayo, and eat him whole.’
‘Don’t let my mother hear you saying that. She loves Helsvir.’ This was only a pretend scold. They were enjoying good-natured banter like friends do.
Tom had dressed before Nicola had come into the room. A glance in the mirror revealed that the swelling had gone from his face, though his jaw still had an interesting mottle of yellow and green bruising. As Nicola headed to the door, he called to her.
‘Nicola?’
‘Yes?’
‘Thanks for looking after me.’
‘I wanted to help.’
‘That first night after I was attacked, you slept on the bed with me?’
‘Fully clothed.’ She smiled. ‘I couldn’t leave you alone after what happened. You were covered in blood. I was scared to death that you were seriously hurt.’
‘Did I say anything . . . you know . . . when I was knocked stupid?’ He was referring to the promise he’d made to marry her.
She laughed. ‘You told me a monster had rushed out of the woods to get those guys.’
‘I was convinced it was Helsvir. It looked just like the carvings at your cottage.’
‘Helsvir only exists in my mother’s head.’ Nicola’s smile vanished. ‘I wish she wasn’t so obsessed.’
‘She wants to protect you from the outside world.’
‘But I don’t need protecting. I’m an adult. I want to go out there and see what the world’s got to offer me.’
‘Come with me to Greece.’
‘What? Me work at a diving school? I don’t know one end of a snorkel from the other.’
‘I’ll teach you.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I mean it. Come with me to Greece.’
Her eyes told him that she suspected he’d start laughing and admit the invitation was a joke and never in a million years would he really want her to go with him. She e
xpects me to hurt her. The realization shocked Tom. She’s so used to people lying to her, or even openly insulting her, that she daren’t believe for even a second that I genuinely like her.
He rose to the challenge. He’d prove his feelings towards her were genuine. ‘Nicola?’
‘What?’ She seemed wary of what he’d say next.
‘Would you like to spend the day here?’
‘Doing what?’
‘Just being together.’
She nodded at the bed. ‘You mean in there? With you?
He shook his head. ‘I was thinking of having a barbecue.’
‘I don’t know . . .’
‘Call it a thank you for looking after me.’
‘You stopped those men hurting me,’ she said.
‘Hardly. The moment I staggered out of the house I fell over.’
‘Right.’ She grinned. ‘Helsvir saved the day. Guardian beastie of the Bekk family.’
‘When I hallucinate, I hallucinate big time.’
‘You can say that again.’
‘So shall I start on the steak marinade?’
‘What about breakfast?’
He laughed. ‘I still want breakfast. I’m keen to try that home-cured bacon.’
‘Breakfast then a barbecue?’ The smile had fully returned. ‘You really are a glutton.’
He did a Tarzan style beat of his chest. ‘Fuel me up! I feel a party coming on!’
THIRTY
They had an unspoken agreement: neither of them would mention the incident two nights ago when Tom was attacked by the four Neanderthals from the village. The sun shone down on Mull-Rigg Hall. Skies were blue. They were enjoying each other’s company too much to spoil the mood by dwelling on that ugly outbreak of violence.
Tom had eaten a large breakfast of home-cured bacon. Mrs Bekk might be eccentric (even the south-side of batty); her bacon, however, was amazingly good.
‘Most bacon I buy just ends up oozing water when it’s fried,’ he told her as they cleared away the breakfast plates. ‘Your mother’s bacon sizzles like bacon should sizzle.’