Hangman, page 3
“Please, is there a phone around here?” Mum asked, and the chef who was wrong shook his head. “No, sorry.”
The waitress who had served Sam Green her breakfast with a shadow of a smile brought the knife down into the back of Marianne Bridges’s neck.
*
7.
The big black man stirred, groaning, like he was in pain, a little groggy. Then he sat up. He went from unconscious to conscious in the space of a second. Inert to full of life.
And he was huge.
He turned his one good eye on Grant, who was suddenly worried. He’d hit this man with his car, and the man must be seven feet tall and built like a tank, too.
“You okay?” asked the man, and suddenly Grant was disarmed. Ready with excuses, apologies, he didn’t know where to go.
The question, simple, asked with sincerity, wasn’t what he’d been expecting at all.
“Ah, I’m fine. Are you okay? I’m sorry I hit you.”
The big man nodded.
“I’ll be all right,” he said, grunting as he pushed himself to his feet. “Think I cracked something when I hit the dirt. It’s not too bad, though,” he added.
“My wife’s gone for help,” said Grant, feeling like he was shrinking while the man went through the laborious process of standing to full height. Something cracked loudly on the way up—the man winced but didn’t cry out.
Grant stammered as he watched the man rise like a skyscraper, a mountain.
“I thought I’d better stay,’ he said truthfully. He didn’t have to think about telling the man that he’d been through his pockets—certainly not the fact that he’d been searching for cigarettes.
“You seen my eye?” said the man.
“It...ah...popped out.” said Grant, wrong-footed again.
“Don’t worry about it. It never did fit right,” the man said, grinning, and Grant was struck by how handsome the man was, despite the gaping hole where his eye should have been. The eyelid drooped and didn’t blink when his other eye blinked.
“I don’t need it. Just looks less troubling than this one,” he said, pulling the steel ball from his pocket. “I wouldn’t look if I were you. People find it disturbing when I put my eye in. I guess it is a little gross,” he smiled.
“Sure,” said Grant.
He heard a soft sucking noise, like the man’s eye socket was hungry. When he turned back, Grant took an involuntary step back. The man who’d woken with a kind question on his lips wasn’t there anymore, and Grant suddenly felt afraid. There was something horrible about the man’s face now, Grant’s own face reflected in that perfect orb. He suddenly felt as though that eye saw perfectly well all his weaknesses and faults.
There looked to be some kind of life in that eye. The big man was looking at him with a different expression on his face, like there was thunder in the man held in check.
“I...ah—”
“Warren Johns,” said the man, smiling again, and in an instance that terror was almost, but not quite forgotten. The big man really did have a disarming smile, and when he held out his massive hand, Grant shook without reservation. He knew the man could crush his hand if he wanted to, but he also understood this man didn’t, wouldn’t, use his strength lightly.
He made Grant feel happy, though Grant didn’t know why. A man of two parts, this Warren: thunder and sunshine, black clouds and meadows rolling in the wind below.
Grant didn’t know where these thoughts came from, but he was comforted by them.
“My wife should be back soon, with help.”
“I don’t need help,” said Warren. “I can walk. Just a cracked rib, a knocked noggin. I’ll be fine. I haven’t got much farther left to walk. I think I can manage.”
“Where are you going? The least we can do is give you a lift.”
“No need, Mr.—?”
“Bridges. Grant Bridges, and I’m sorry, once again. I can’t apologize enough—”
Suddenly he remembered the body hanging from the tree, and couldn’t believe he’d forgotten it.
And what did that say about him?
“Shit,” he said, almost too embarrassed to say anything at all. “I ... don’t know what I was thinking ... I was driving too fast ... but only because there was a boy ... hanged ... in a tree. Shit, what am I thinking? I’ve got to go—”
“I know, Grant, I know. I saw him, too,” said Warren Johns, and the thunder was there in that steel eye again. Grant’s blood ran cold.
*
Warren Johns could see even better with his steel eye than the one he was born with. Warren was much like a little boy named William Bridges—his eye saw the things other eyes slid past.
Like the footprints that remained in the road underneath the boy swinging in the tree, or the others embedded into the loose gravel of the old road. The signs were there for people to see, but the eye slid past, right on to the boy and nothing else.
Warren Johns was like a feral animal in some ways. So highly attuned to this land—England, his England—that he could feel the thumping of trains passing in the distance and frightened rabbit’s hind feet as though the two things were the same.
He could smell the sex on the boy, despite the rain and the passage of time and the heavier, headier stench of terror.
He knew Grant was weak, but that had never stopped Warren Johns from using such a man when the need was great.
He saw the guilt in Grant’s eyes, but Warren Johns wasn’t the Hangman. It wasn’t for him to judge.
No, he thought wryly, I just use them up.
But what choice did he have? The Hangman would be coming. Coming to the little village of Frampton.
And he was afraid this time, like he’d never been in all his years of walking the land, because he thought maybe this time he was already too late. It had started, and this Grant Bridges didn’t know a damn thing about it.
His wife was already in the village and she was in terrible danger. But Warren wouldn’t rush in blindly, and he couldn’t let Grant Bridges do so, either, because he’d need allies. No man was an island, even when he’s six feet seven inches and practically cast in steel.
“Mr. Bridges, I didn’t kill that boy, like you’re thinking, but your wife’s in Frampton, and that’s where I’m headed. It’s only a couple of miles down the road, and I’m a good walker. Join me on the road?”
Warren watched as the man nodded, although he was shaking between comfort and fear. Many people had that reaction to Warren. He didn’t often wear his steel eye, but when he did, it was stronger.
He stepped down the verge, saw the gouge where Grant had tried to swerve and hit the hard-packed dirt.
He nodded to himself. Grant was all right. A weak man, maybe, and maybe he’d use him up, but he wouldn’t let him or his wife die if he could help it.
He didn’t know he was already too late to keep that promise.
*
8.
The chef held out both hands, palms up, shoulders lifted. The left palm was empty; there was a cleaver in his right: the universal gesture for WTF—apart from the cleaver.
Sam mentally jotted this into the notebook she carried around in her head as she switched into writer mode, thinking fast, registering everything in that kind of slow-motion capture that her eyes and ears were gifted with.
“What the hell did you do that for?” said the chef, like he was as shocked as Sam.
“She saw ... I panicked, okay?” said the young waitress.
That wasn’t the first thing. The first thing, chronologically, was the woman with the child on her hip. Before the words, she crumpled to the floor. Crippled, probably dying. Her eyes turned to Sam, and she framed her mouth for a scream, but nothing came out. Her spine was severed, and the knife had gone deep enough to take her ability to speak.
She crumpled next, her body catching up with the fact that the knife, thrust with force, had pierced the brain stem, or some vertebrae.
The next thing ...
The girl, the murderer, wincing, and looking at her hand. It had slipped on the blade as she stabbed downwards, cutting her palm deeply. Blood poured already—more blood, it seemed, than what spilled from the woman on the floor.
The boy hit the floor a moment after his mother, still crying, but his tone changed from sadness to pain.
“—I panicked, okay?” said the girl.
Sam didn’t panic. She was cold, watching the scene play out. She could feel the set of her own face. Shock, but not blind panic.
The girl was between her and the door, but unarmed because her knife was jutting from the neck of the poor woman on the floor.
The chef said, “Fuck,” and came at her with the cleaver. He was still ten feet away, but closing fast.
Sam broke from observing mode and clenched her left fist. She slammed it into the girl’s nose and felt a crunch. For an instant she wasn’t sure if she’d broken the girl’s nose or her own hand because the punch hurt her so much, but then blood flooded from the killer’s nose.
Grabbing the boy under the armpits as she bolted, and nearly throwing him in the air, Sam, already moving, took the boy against her chest and barged past the girl. She couldn’t see the chef anymore. Couldn’t worry about it.
She ran for the door, adrenaline bolstering her strength, and she didn’t even notice the added weight of the boy.
She lost time because the door opened inward. She slammed against it the first time, but she didn’t curse, though she imagined it might be locked and she would be dead soon. The second time she yanked the door inwards and the cleaver sailed past her head and out into the street.
Good, she thought. The chef was unarmed, and he’d been a little overweight. Sam was a runner—she could maybe outrun him.
The little boy was screaming, but she ignored him.
She ran. Where to? Didn’t matter. That was the thing about running. Didn’t matter where you ran, just as long as you did.
*
The chef ran out into the car park just in time to see the woman running into the small newsagents on the opposite side of the green.
“Fuck,” he said, and swore again as he saw the street sweeper.
“It’s all right, Bruce,” said the old man, puffing away on his dog end, leaning on his trash cart. A broom poked up from the side of it, and a shovel. The teddy bear on the front smiled at Bruce, the chef. The other man returned a greasy yellow-toothed smirk that would have been lost in his gray beard had it not been so wide. Jovial, but without humor.
“This yours?” said the sweeper, holding out the cleaver. He turned his attention from the chef for a second as the waitress ran out of the hotel, pale faced and bleeding heavily from hand and nose. She teeter-tottered out into the car park.
The grubby older man ignored the girl and turned a raised eyebrow back at the chef.
“Yes,” said the chef, backing up. “Yes, it’s my cleaver.” Wary. Watching that dangerous man toying with the cleaver in his hand.
“Fucked that up big-time, didn’t ya?”
“I’m ... I’m—”
“Forget it,” said the old man. “It’s started anyways. Fuck it, right? Going to be some mess.”
“The body?”
The man hawked and spat. He didn’t ask if the woman was dead. He didn’t need to.
“I’m a street sweeper, ain’t I?” he said instead, that grin of his fixed on his bearded face. “You want housekeeping, Bruce. Right?”
Bruce nodded.
“Fix her, too, would you?” said the sweeper, pointing at the bleeding girl. “Don’t care how. Just do it in the pub, because I ain’t cleaning up your shit. Got it?”
The chef nodded again.
“All right, go on. Here,” said the man holding out the cleaver in one grimy hand. “You’ll need this.” He flicked the cleaver underhanded at the chef, so that it spun.
Fifty-fifty chance the old man meant for the chef to take his fingers off. Bruce knew this. He could let the cleaver fall, but that wasn’t the way the sweeper liked it.
He grabbed the cleaver in midair and grunted as he caught it by the handle.
“Nice catch. Now, go on.”
Daisy—the waitress—was groggy, trying to walk. Bruce took her wrist roughly in the hand not holding the cleaver and dragged her back into the hotel.
*
Terrence gazed across the village, across the road, towards the tiny village shop. Dale Smithson owned the shop. He was a good man. He’d sort it out. Dale was a man who could be trusted implicitly not to fuck up.
Even so, with Gallows Night so close, a fuckwit could still be a fuckwit. Dumb waitress. Stupid chit of a girl. She’d put them all in danger.
He looked up into the drizzle. Strained to see the church spire on the corner of the curving road into the village. He could barely see it. He didn’t think the other villagers would have seen the girl. Fuck, they were mostly idiots anyway—didn’t see half the things that went on in the village.
Better be careful, Terrence, he thought. Thinking like that before Gallows Night. Thinking like that could get a man killed.
Because it wasn’t his village, was it?
The mist would soon cover everything, and maybe his own hubris. He needed to remember he wasn’t the boss, though it might feel that way sometimes. He, too, was just a servant to the Hangman.
Terrence pushed his dirty little cart with the horrible teddy bear riding high in the front across the empty street. There wouldn’t be any more traffic today. He didn’t need to worry about getting hit by a car.
Today, tonight ... old-school only. And the Hangman rode a dark horse, didn’t he?
No Fords or Toyotas for the Hangman, no cars in Frampton.
Just death, thought Terrence, that rictus on his grubby face.
He pushed his cart across the green, trailing smoke behind him and humming merrily.
*
9.
Grant concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. He had his coat back, but he was cold. He had good shoes on, but his feet hurt. He could barely make out the church spire in the growing mist—the rain, thank God, had stopped, but this mist was freezing. There was frost on the hedgerows at the side of the road. The rain that had fallen, the moisture in the air, it was all turning to frost and ice.
Grant’s gloves were in the car. His hat was in the car. His car was in the village and to get them he had to walk another, what, maybe two miles? Probably another thirty minutes or so, but it was getting harder all the time.
Warren didn’t seem affected by the cold at all. He was wearing a thick coat, but his hands weren’t thrust deep into the pockets like Grant’s, but swung loose by his side. His stride matched his stature: great loping footsteps that Grant struggled to keep up with.
He thought of a million things to say to Warren Johns, but none of them seemed relevant. Just put one foot forward, then the next. Find Marianne. Find William. Get warm. In that order ...
No, thought Grant. That’s not right.
Find Marianne and William and a newsagents. Buy a pack of cigarettes. Smoke a cigarette. Get warm. Once he had a smoke on the go, he could handle the cold. He felt like he could handle anything if he could just get a cigarette.
The body, the accident, his giant and slightly unsettling partner on the road. He could deal with it.
Part of him worried that Marianne hadn’t returned, that there was no help coming, but then, it wasn’t far now, though the mist was getting heavier and he could no longer make out the spire of the church. They’d get there. The road was plain enough, though the road, too, was turning white with frost. Soon everything would be covered in fine white ice.
Cigarette first, then Marianne. Fuck it, if she couldn’t be bothered to come back for him, why should he go hunting around for her? She could wait, and William would be fine as long as he was with his mother.
*
It’s started already, thought Warren as he and Grant walked along the road and into the outskirts of the village.
There was no traffic on the roads, no people, no one walking a dog. The birds were quiet. Everything was shrouded already, in fog and ice and silence.
He was late. Maybe if he could have made it earlier ... but there was no point in thinking like that. The mist, the frost covering everything ... the village was already turning inside out. He didn’t know when it would start, but it would be soon. He was sure of that. Gallows Night. The Night of the Hangman.
He saw villagers behind the frosted windows of their houses, watching their little procession of two walk along the church. Warren wasn’t sure, but he thought most of those who watched him were already gone over to the Hangman. Those that didn’t come to the windows were probably watching their morning shows, making late breakfasts, sleeping in late ... blissfully unaware of what was going on in their village. It was those that Warren came for: the ignorant, the innocent, the ones who just felt the need to stay home this day. The ones who thought, Maybe I won’t go into the village today, maybe I won’t go to work ...
The others, he couldn’t save them now. Couldn’t do anything about them.
The Hangman was his business though. If he could survive until nightfall. He was under no illusions—they would be coming for him.
But this man—Grant Bridges—was his responsibility too. He could sense plenty of sin on the man, but Warren wasn’t a judge. He was just a walker, meandering from town to town, village to village.
Maybe the last one left who knew the old places, the places of power. Maybe the last one who could see with true eyes.
It hadn’t always been that way. Once, he’d been a wrestler, then later, a bouncer. He’d been young back then. Now he was getting older. His fighting days were done. But he would still stand against the Hangman.
Because his eyes would not slide past—his real eye, nor his steel. And while he could see what others could not, he could not stand idle. Never had, never would.
