Darker

  Without hesitating, she walked onto the drive. Everything had an overgrown, neglected look to it. She guessed whoever owned the house would be elderly: they were letting things go now. Lawn ankle-deep, ivy starting to grow over window panes.

  Half-way along the drive she came upon an elderly-looking Ford Granada. She carefully eased up the handle.

  Thank Christ for that.

  It was unlocked. The car was hidden from the house by banks of bushes. Quickly Rosemary slipped into the driver’s seat. She pumped the pedals and checked that the gear lever was in neutral. Those drives along the lane to and from her friend’s house came back to her. I can do this, she thought, I can do it.

  She looked for the key in the ignition. There wasn’t one.

  Shit. This wasn’t going to be as easy as she thought.

  ‘Rosemary Snow?’ Michael’s smile widened as he sat looking back from the passenger seat. ‘Never heard of her. Is she a cartoon character?’

  Amy bit her sandwich and gave an emphatic shake of her head. ‘You know Rosemary Snow.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t, Amy.’ Michael grinned and looked at Christine. ‘She’s got a heck of an imagination, hasn’t she?’

  Christine nodded. ‘And you haven’t even met the Boys yet.’

  ‘The Boys?’

  Christine told Michael about Amy’s Boys. The imaginary friends she could summon at will. Richard saw that Christine was finding comfort in talking about what was familiar to them.

  As he drove, he glanced at Michael who listened attentively as if fascinated. No doubt the man was just being polite, thought Richard wearily, but at least he did a good job of being interested. Even asking questions and nodding thoughtfully at the answers.

  ‘And The Boys come to play whenever you call them?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Where are they now?’

  ‘Riding on top of the car.’

  ‘Bet it’s windy up there for them.’

  ‘They like it. They’re singing.’ Amy sang: ‘Three blind mice, three blind mice, three blind mice …’

  ‘What’re their names?’

  ‘Not telling, nosy parker.’

  ‘Amy,’ Christine scolded.

  Michael laughed softly. ‘What do they look like?’

  ‘Big and blue. No ears and no hair.’

  ‘Oooh, scary.’

  ‘They’re not.’

  ‘Bet you have fun with them.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Are they still singing?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you tell them what to do?’

  ‘Yes, she does,’ said Christine. ‘You’re a right little sergeant-major, aren’t you?’

  Amy folded her arms. ‘I give them orders.’

  Michael nodded. ‘You give them orders.’ He repeated as if it was important.

  Amy grinned brightly. ‘Boys! Stop picking your noses. Boys! Go to the toilet. Boys! Boys! Jump off the car and go and find Rosemary Snow!’

  Rosemary Snow was in trouble.

  She hunted through the glove compartment and felt under the dash for a spare key.

  Nothing.

  Bloody nothing.

  She swore under her breath. Weren’t cars supposed to be the easiest things in the world to steal?

  She felt beneath the dash again, her fingers finding clumps of cable. She’d heard you could hotwire cars by cutting certain cables and connecting one to another. But how the hell did she do that? And how could she break the steering lock with her bare hands?

  Shit.

  She looked out through the windscreen.

  Damn.

  He must have been watching her for the last five minutes. Standing in the bushes, an old guy in a straw hat. He was watching her with a look that was more amused than outraged.

  She felt a thorough pedigree idiot.

  Blushing, she grabbed the holdall and ran from the car.

  Later, she found a service station and hung around near the forecourt. When a driver had filled his tank and then gone to pay the cashier, maybe she could simply jump in and drive away. They left the doors unlocked.

  But they take the bloody key with them, stupid. She swore again. If she messed up, she’d be handed over to the police. She could do nothing to help that family then. She’d only have all her life ahead of her to imagine the little girl’s screams as that thing trod her into the ground.

  Come on, Rosemary Snow. Think, think – THINK!

  You haven’t the technical know-how to hotwire a car. You don’t know how to break the steering lock.

  So. What have you got?

  You must have something that’s of use.

  Yeah, right, Rosemary Snow, you’ve got two bruised tits and a Frankenstein face.

  Why not go across there and scare that guy right out of his Mini Metro …

  But you have got something. The realization surprised her, and in a strange way uplifted her. You’ve got something that one-eyed twat in the church wanted Shame about the face, but you’ve got the slim girlish body that men would love to get their hands on, given half the chance.

  As she walked away from the garage she was thinking hard.

  ‘Have the Boys found Rosemary Snow?’ Michael asked. He yawned in a deliberate way.

  Amy sat, her eyes becoming stary, the way they did when she was tired.

  ‘What’s wrong, Amy?’ Michael grinned. ‘Monkey nicked your tongue?’

  Still staring straight ahead she said in a small voice. ‘They’ve seen the big thing.’

  ‘What big thing?’

  ‘The big thing. The big thing that’s following us.’

  ‘Oh,’ Michael whispered. ‘That big thing.’

  Richard shivered and looked in the rearview mirror. He could only see cars on the motorway and storm clouds bubbling up over the horizon; nevertheless, he shivered again.

  Christine looked at Michael. ‘Can Amy sense it, too?’

  ‘Children are sensitive to things like this. She knows, all right.’

  Amy blinked as she came out of the stary phase. ‘Mum, where are we going?’

  ‘That’s what I’d like to know.’

  Michael smiled. ‘How about a trip to the seaside?’

  It was early evening by the time the plan looked as if it might actually work.

  The fish took the bait.

  Rosemary had been standing in the car park of a motorway service station. Deliberately, she’d adopted a lost look; even tried to make herself look more than a little simple, too. She’d brushed her long hair back to life again and had stood toying with a strand. She hoped it had broadcast a ‘Hi there, big boy, look what you been missing’ kind of message; also, pulling her hair across the side of her face hid the mess of scabs and stitches that looked like a line of dead spiders stuck to her skin.

  It didn’t seem to be working. And time was rolling away like a driverless juggernaut. She needed to be moving. Now, now, NOW!

  Then the VW van had pulled up.

  Winding down the window the driver, a man wearing Deidre Barlow glasses said, ‘You look lost.’

  ‘I’m waiting for a lift.’

  ‘Oh.’ The man sounded disappointed. ‘You’re expecting a friend?’

  ‘No. But I need a lift.’ She tried to sound casually sexy.

  ‘A lift?’ The man looked round nervously as if afraid someone might be watching him, the big window lenses of his glasses flashing red in the setting sun. ‘Why don’t you hitch down by the roundabout?’

  ‘If I hitched anyone might stop and pick me up. I wanted a lift with someone nice.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Sheffield.’

  ‘That’ll do.’ She waited, twirling her long hair. ‘Well?’

  ‘Uh? Oh, yeah, yeah. Here, get in. I’ll, eh, get the door … I …’

  Flustered, he opened the passenger door of the van. As she shut the door she smiled at this nervous man in his Deidre Barlow glasses
and thought, ‘For Christsakes, Rosemary. What have you done? More to the point, how are you going to actually pull this off?’

  Stammering something about it looking like rain, he pulled out of the car park.

  You need this van, she told herself. Find that anger inside you. You can save that family; you can get your revenge on the stranger. Remember. It’s because of him you’re now cursed with this Frankenstein face.

  ‘You know, I – I think we might be in for a thunderstorm,’ he said, pushing the Diedre Barlow glasses up the bridge of his nose. ‘It’ll be a relief, won’t it?’ He beamed at her. ‘It’s been so bloody hot.’

  He was younger than she had first thought. She imagined he’d be the kind to be tormented with taunts about being an Anorak. His clothes were unfashionable, the hair laughably curly, the Deidre Barlow glasses absurd. And he was as nervous as a kid on a diving board who couldn’t swim to save his life. What she did feel for him was a wave of sympathy. She’d had enough of the jeering and Red Zed taunts because of the birthmark to know keenly the kind of teenage years he must have endured.

  ‘If you want something to read …’ He pushed the glasses up the bridge of his nose. ‘There’s some magazines under the dash-board.’ He looked away as he spoke. ‘Haven’t looked at them myself … I’ve, eh … I’ve a girl friend who – who likes looking at them.’

  The magazines were hard porn. Her first instinct was to push them back on to the shelf. But she sat and forced herself to thumb through them calmly as if they were a pile of knitting magazines.

  He bit his lip and looked out of the window. She could sense his trembling excitement. Suddenly she thought: Once he’s had sex with me, will he kill me?

  Chapter 33

  Desperate Measures

  Amy closed her eyes. The seaside. She liked the sea, and the sands. And they always had fairs and cafés. She liked Burger King best. They might go there.

  She was tired and the rhythmic sound of the tyres on the road made her too sleepy to be frightened now. Sometimes when you’re four years old things happen that make no sense. And today nothing made any sense. There had been a lot of shouting. Joey usually laughed and talked a lot. Now he hardly spoke at all. Mum and Dad seemed very serious. Michael smiled a lot; he seemed nice. But what he said puzzled her, too. He said he didn’t know Rosemary Snow. But somehow she knew, and she knew it as well as she was called Amy Young who was four years old, nearly five, that he did know Rosemary Snow.

  And then there was something she could see in her head. Just like she could imagine the Boys; but somehow this was darker. And it was something she didn’t like. She snuggled closer to her mother. This dark thing followed them. She didn’t know what it looked like. But for some reason she thought of her shelf on her bedroom wall. That’s where all her teddy bears sat. In the morning she’d sit up yawning, and inside the bedroom it would be so gloomy she could see nothing but their button eyes. Loads and loads of dark button eyes gleaming at her.

  She yawned and thought of the seaside again. She remembered the last time she had been to the seaside. She couldn’t recall the name of the place but she remembered the big roller coaster rides, the pier, and there was a big metal tower made up of criss-cross bits of metal, and it went right, right up into the sky …

  The images came to Rosemary with a brilliance that was blinding. The man, Robbie, drove the van south and talked about the exhibition of model aircraft he was going to visit.

  In her mind’s eye the brilliant images paraded past. She was seeing what Amy was seeing. Roller coaster rides, piers, sand, sea. And the distinctive tower built out of iron girders that was a replica of the Eiffel tower in Paris.

  Blackpool, she thought triumphantly. Michael’s taken the family to the west coast resort. At last she had a definite destination.

  Now she had to get her backside in gear. She had to get there fast.

  She thought of asking Robbie to drive her there; perhaps if she hinted about passionate nights in a backstreet hotel? No. She didn’t think he’d bite on that. From the look of the model aeroplane parts – wings, engines, airscrews – covering the floor in the back of the van, that was his abiding passion in life. What he obviously wanted now was what he saw as a quick and very dirty fumble; then, when he’d got all those annoying and intrusive sexual tensions out of his system, he’d be back with his beloved Focke Wulf fighter again.

  Maybe she should have picked up some trucker. He’d have been married, no doubt. He’d have copulated with her without any fuss, or even much excitement. He’d just be notching up another mark on an already impressive score. But she guessed a middle-aged trucker would be too worldly-wise; he’d probably suss she planned something more than ten minutes of thrusting and a cigarette.

  Robbie was naive, but he was also scary.

  Rosemary watched his hands tremble as he gripped the steering wheel. His sexual tension was mixed up with darker passions.

  ‘Do you think girls enjoy that?’ she asked in a deadpan way as she pointed at the magazine centrefold.

  ‘I … I don’t know …’

  ‘She’s smiling, so she must be enjoying it, I suppose.’

  ‘Do you … do you think you’d enjoy doing it like that?’

  She shrugged. ‘I’ve never done it like that before.’

  ‘Have you ever done it before?’ Robbie sweated hard.

  ‘Loads.’

  ‘Oh …’

  She glanced quickly at him. He’d recoiled as if he’d been too close to something that disgusted him.

  ‘It was a while ago now. And I’ve only had one boyfriend.’

  She’d have to tread carefully. Robbie looked a neurotic mess of sexual tensions. Women probably frightened him as much as they fascinated him. If she came across too worldly it’d probably scare him off.

  ‘It’s the first time I’ve seen magazines like this,’ she said, trying to sound as naive as possible. ‘That page there. Do you think it would hurt to do it like that?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘It might be nice for the girl?’ he suggested, sweating.

  ‘It might,’ she agreed. Then, in a matter-of-fact way, she said, ‘Why don’t we try it?’

  The tremors down his arms jerked the steering wheel enough to make the whole van twitch.

  ‘Why not?’ he said as nonchalantly as he could, but he was trembling and sweating, and repeatedly whispered something under his breath she couldn’t catch.

  ‘Find somewhere quiet,’ she told him.

  As soon as Robbie was clear of the town he drove slowly along a country road, his eyes behind the Deidre Barlow glasses eagerly scanning left and right for somewhere quiet to pull over. Rosemary watched a ball of sweat roll down his nose.

  She thought: I hope for your sake this works, Red Zed. Otherwise you could end up in serious trouble.

  He found an opening in the hedge and drove on to a cart track. It led the van bumping uphill between two lines of trees. In the back of the van the model aeroplane fuselages, wings and tail units rolled from side to side.

  Eagerly he asked ‘Quiet enough, you think?

  ‘Quiet enough,’ she agreed. And she wished she were anywhere else on Earth but here.

  As the trees thinned higher up the hill he pulled off the track and U-turned the van across the grass, braked, switched off the engine, then turned to face her.

  He was trembling hard now, teeth chattering. ‘Ah … well, then …’

  ‘Well, then?’

  The smile he tried to give should have been a charming one. But his lips slid from side to side. ‘Do you think … page fifteen … shall we try that?’

  Rosemary pulled out a smile. ‘Fifteen. My lucky number.’

  ‘Jesus. What happened to your face?’

  ‘Oh … I had an accident. I —’

  ‘Did … did he do that to you?’

  For a moment she was stunned, thinking that somehow he knew that Michael had —


  ‘Your … your boyfriend. He did that, didn’t he?’

  Robbie had supplied his own answer. She nodded.

  ‘Oh, what a mess … what a fucking mess.’ There was no sympathy. Her injury excited him. Tremors ran up his neck to shake his face, making the glasses slip down his nose.

  ‘Does it hurt?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh …’ That really excited him. He breathed deeply. ‘Does it hurt a lot?’

  She nodded, solemn.

  ‘How did he do it? With his fist? Were you naked when … I mean were you doing it … you know … Jesus, he ripped your face in two!’

  She nodded, her mouth dry. Go on, Red Zed, get it over and done with. Time’s running out. You’ve got to get to Blackpool and find the bastard who dropped you into this hell.

  ‘You don’t have to kiss me,’ she said.

  ‘All right.’ He sounded relieved. ‘But it’s OK if I … I?’

  She nodded.

  He squealed with excitement. She clenched her jaw. Christ, he actually squealed like a piglet. Oh, get me through this one, God … please get me through it in one piece.

  A thought struck her. ‘It’s a bit cramped here. Can we go in the back?’

  ‘Sure. Sure. I’ll just make some space. You know – you know I’ve got some valuable models back there. There – there’s a Messerschmitt, that was a jet-powered World War Two fighter. Probably the only effective jet fighter of the war.’

  She heard the exhilaration in his voice. He was sharing his special love of the model planes with her.

  ‘I – I’ll move it to one side. I’m strong when I get going you know, really strong.’ He sweated faster. ‘Things get broken when I get going, you know.’ He swung open the door and climbed out. ‘I’ve broken things before. I – I’m stronger than I look …’

  As he went round the back of the van Rosemary slid across to the driving seat, locked the door, then twisted the key in the ignition. The VW motor started with its characteristic metallic clicking sound.

  ‘Hey!’ shouted Robbie through the window. ‘What you playing at? I thought —’

  There seemed a heck of a difference between a car and a van. She stamped at the clutch and tried to force the gear into first.