Hangman, page 4
He walked down the street beside the man who’d run him over, bearing no grudge, hoping the man could find his wife and son and that they would get the hell out while they still could.
There was still time. Still morning, now, and still early. Time to get them out and be alone with the night.
There was still time, wasn’t there?
“Is that ... is that the pub?” asked Grant.
Warren thought it was. He could make out a car in one of the parking slots out front, right underneath a frosted white noose and gibbet.
Of course, he thought. Where else would the Hangman come through?
“That’s my wife’s car,” said Grant. “I can’t believe she never came back.”
Never came back, thought Warren. He didn’t like the sound of it.
“Ah,” said Grant, stopping with a smile on his face. “There’s a newsagents. Thank fucking hell.”
Of course Grant didn’t notice the absence of people, the absence of noise. He had two good eyes, but he couldn’t see.
“Mr. Bridges? I think we should find your wife first. Don’t you?”
Warren’s distaste for the man grew slightly, watching Grant shifting his gaze between one and the other, as though the little man was torn between the newsagents and his wife. But he couldn’t let him go. Not to the newsagents.
Because Warren could feel him through the mist. The Gatekeeper. The Hangman’s servant.
Was he ready for the Gatekeeper?
No.
There were still preparations to make.
“Mr. Bridges? Your wife?”
“Fuck it,” Grant said, under his breath.
Warren nodded. Walked up to the door, past the car, and into the Noose and Gibbet. He turned, saw Grant give the newsagents one final, longing look.
Warren Johns walked into the hotel, smelling hot blood first, then saw it splattered on the wooden floor all the way through the lobby, out to the kitchen.
He’d thought there was still time, but he was wrong. You’re a fool, Warren Johns, he thought, feeling frightened for the first time, because it had started and the innocent were dying.
No one would be getting out until this thing was done. Not alive, leastways. Not alive.
*
10.
As Warren Johns and Grant Bridges walked along the road to town, that eerily empty road, Sam Green and William Bridges burst into the newsagents. The small bell above the door was slammed so hard it came free and rattled, dull, on the tiled floor of the shop.
“Oh, thank God, thank God,” said Sam, shaking and panting from the sudden cold outside and terror and exertion. Exertion and cold, mainly though, because terror really hadn’t had time to sink in.
“Whatever’s the matter, girl?” said a woman behind the counter. Cigarettes and lottery tickets were arrayed behind her, almost artfully.
A man came out from the back on the shop and stood behind the lottery machine. He was a big man, and fat, too. There was a frown on his face.
“Is that ... is that blood?” he said, concerned etched into his broad face, his jowls wobbling as he spoke.
“It’s not mine,” said Sam. “Please, call the police ... lock the door. There’s a madwoman across the road in the pub…she killed—”
Suddenly, she felt like sobbing but she didn’t. She wouldn’t. The child on her hip didn’t say anything, though he was old enough to talk. Funny, the writer part of her noted, as she took in the shop and the two people serving her.
Serving her? Fuck it, she nearly laughed.
“Please,” she said, and turned around and locked the door with a flick. When she turned back the fat man wasn’t behind the lottery machine anymore, he was coming towards her.
“Come on,” he said, holding out his hand. “You can come through to the back. Tell me what happened. We’ll phone the police, won’t we, Marjory?”
“We will, we will,” said Marjory.
Something tickled at Sam, but she was too damn scared now. Her legs had begun to shake and her heart, calming, began to pound again.
Something tickled like mad, but she didn’t know what it was. She followed the fat man towards the back of the shop: past the magazines, jars of sweets, the lottery machine ... the little boy screamed right in her ear.
*
William Bridges clung to the woman, wondering why she couldn’t see it. The fat man and his wife, Marjory, they looked fine, but they weren’t. They were wrong. Unnatural. Fey.
He learned that word listening to his mother. His mother called him fey. He’d looked it up. It seemed to make sense, somehow. Seemed to fit.
He looked around the shop in that way of his. The racks of cigarettes behind the counter were all brands he didn’t recognize—he’d stood at the cigarette counter enough times with his dad to know a few brands. Everything there was covered with dust. In fact, the whole place was covered in dust. The floor was filthy with ages’ worth of grime from dropped sweets and muddy feet. The sandwiches in the fridge were moldy, milk bottles had burst, leaking cheesy-looking rotten liquid down the front of the cooler cabinet. The magazines weren’t magazines but old newspapers and things like annuals, but for adults and local maps.
It was like half the place was new, the other half stuck at some weird point in the past.
Maybe William didn’t understand all that he saw. He was only seven. Cute as a button and twice as smart, his granny said, though William didn’t think being twice as smart as a button was a good thing. He didn’t feel smart. Sometimes he wet the bed, still. He was aware of himself in a way many children that age were not, though. He understood he needed to keep quiet about the things he saw when he wasn’t with his mum and dad.
He didn’t worry about Mum. He didn’t really understand what he’d seen, but after the mean woman had hit his mummy and made her bleed, Mummy had sat up and followed them out of the pub, so he knew she was okay, though the girl-woman holding him had just locked his mother out of the shop.
His mother seemed to want him to come out of the shop, but he felt ... he felt there was something else he needed to see. He didn’t understand it. He made a little wave at his mother and she looked sad and then they were walking towards the rear of the shop, between the fat woman named Marjory and the fat big man who said he was going to call the police, but he lied. William knew the man lied, but he didn’t understand why, or how, he knew. There was a body behind the counter and something shifted, the whole world shifted, and he could see the real world, the really real world, at the same time. In one vision, the body wasn’t there. In the other vision, a man’s body was on the floor behind the counter and that man didn’t have a head to speak of, apart from the bit with the teeth in it.
He screamed. The woman said, “Jesus, kid!”
But didn’t stop, didn’t run, so he slapped her instead.
“Fuck! Ow! Fuck!” said the girl.
“Run,” said William, understanding now that the girl-woman couldn’t see the body—if she could have, she would have tripped over the dead man.
His words were too late. The fat man punched the girl-woman in the face and she crumpled to the floor. William fell, too, and hit his head.
Then it went dark.
*
11.
Dale and Marjory Smithson peered down at Sam and William. Both were unconscious on the floor. A small dribble of blood ran through the boy’s scalp, lost among his dark unruly hair, just like his father’s.
“Bit peckish,” said Marjory.
“The sweeper—”
“Fuck the sweeper,” said Marjory.
“Shh, damn it, woman. Shut up that talk!”
Dale was a little peckish, too, but the sweeper would want the girl and when he did, he’d come for her. He'd want her whole, too.
“Get the kid,” Dale said, finally. “We’ll put ’em in the shed.”
His wife tutted, petulant, but she knew better than to go against her husband. He’d shown her the back of his hand plenty of times when once had been enough.
Dale watched his wife pick up the little kid like he was a bag of sweets. He picked up the girl under her arms then hoisted her easily onto his broad shoulders. He followed his wife out the back of the shop.
It was midmorning and the sky was that peculiar kind of half-dark that a truly foggy day brings. The cold hit Dale instantly, and for a second he wondered if the two captives would freeze to death before they served their purpose.
There was thick ice crusting everything in sight. The world had turned white, and he couldn’t see the church spire anymore through the thick fog. It was probably cold enough to freeze to death.
He put it from his mind. All he knew was that it wasn’t time yet, and when it was, the sweeper would let him know. It wasn’t time, and the best he could do was throw them in the shed and lock them in. He thought about maybe heading back up the stairs to his flat above the shop, fetching a couple of coats. But then he thought about the stairs on the way up, the walk all the way back out in the cold.
“Fuck ’em,” he said to no one in particular. His wife had already gone back in, after dumping the kid unceremoniously to the floor of the storage shed.
The shed had a light, just a bare bulb hanging down from the ceiling. He removed the bulb and pocketed it.
Marjory had gone back, he thought again. He considered, for a moment, sating his hunger.
Thought better of it, because he could feel the sweeper out there, on the street somewhere, hidden in the freezing fog.
“Fuck ’em,” he said and spat to one side.
He bolted the door and put the padlock back on. Then he went back into the shop to wait. Midmorning. The cold was coming. The night ...
The night would be long.
Back in the shop he took a licorice string and chewed thoughtful, looking out the front of the shop and across to the pub, where he saw a mousy little man and a huge black fellow walk through the door to the Noose and Gibbet.
*
12.
Warren was the first into the Noose and Gibbet, so he was the first one to see the chef and the girl. He knew he was a chef because of his attire. The girl wasn’t screaming, because she was unconscious. Warren thought she was probably unconscious from blood loss, though he couldn’t be sure, she might be dead.
The blood loss was due to the man on top of her, who’d removed her hands with a cleaver before beginning to eat her.
Warren didn’t think any more than that. It was irrelevant. He could see the chef was gone ... gone to the Hangman. Bought and sold.
He stepped across the lobby to the wide stairs where the girl was being eaten—perhaps half-alive, still, and took up the cleaver, which had been discarded. The chef was so intent on his endeavors that he didn’t notice Warren’s heavy booted footsteps approaching on the wooden floor.
Warren was aware of Grant coming in behind him, but he couldn’t worry about that.
With the cleaver in his hand, he shouted at the man atop the girl. The man turned, shock on his purple, bloody face; purple from the effort of slaughter and maybe the cold blowing in through the open front door.
Warren Johns swung the cleaver with all his strength into the man’s face, cutting it in two.
Warren was aware of the little man, Grant, behind him. He was aware of the shocked gasp—shocked at the murder. Maybe because Grant hadn’t realized what the chef was doing. Maybe because he didn’t see well enough to see the girl’s hands had been removed.
The cleaver traveled straight through the cook’s face, but he wasn’t dead. For a second he stared dumbly up at Warren, his cheeks and his nose split in two. Then he put his hands to his face and screamed.
Warren chopped again, and this time the scream cut off.
He was panting, feeling his rage held in check. He wanted to carry on chopping and cutting until there was nothing left of the chef but pieces, but he couldn’t. If he let the urge take him, he’d be no different than the dead man before him. Then the Hangman would have him, too, and the whole village would be damned.
Plus, he might still need the funny little man gasping and screaming behind him, because he could see, as much as he didn’t want to, that the job wasn’t done. Not yet. He raised the cleaver again, ignoring the man’s cries, begging him to stop.
Not the chef’s pleas. The chef was dead.
The pleas came from Grant Bridges, but Warren had a job to do. He couldn’t listen. He couldn’t afford to leave one behind.
*
13.
Grant felt himself freeze as he stepped into the lobby of the hotel. He tried to find his voice but couldn’t.
A man was eating a woman in front of him. That it was taking place in the lobby of a hotel with the front door wide open didn’t register until much later, but by that time he had other things on his mind.
He watched, his shock deepening, going so low within him that he couldn’t find his voice at all, and then it came. As the cleaver fell and Grant saw what the blade had done to the man—the chef, he thought, a drifting thought passing his mind, which was shutting down—the chef and the cleaver. The cleaver fell, and he screamed.
But Warren Johns wasn’t done.
Grant found his voice.
“Please, no! What are you doing? Stop!”
It didn’t make any difference.
*
Warren looked down at the girl. She wasn’t dead, but unconscious. But he couldn’t take the chance that she would die on her own. She probably would, but if she didn’t...
The cleaver fell again and blood splashed over the outdated wallpaper, over the red carpet runner in the middle of the stairs, over the wooden banister and newel, through the air in red fat drops.
Warren pushed himself up from his knees and turned on Grant, a wild man covered in blood with a cleaver in his hand.
Warren didn’t have a chance to speak, because the man turned and ran straight back out the door.
He thought about following him, but he couldn’t, not now. Because there was still a trail of blood to follow, and he had to know where that trail of blood led. Someone might still be alive out there, at the end of the blood. Probably not. But he couldn’t leave someone wounded, not if they still had a soul. He couldn’t just leave them behind.
*
“Oh,” said Warren, simply, as he stood in the kitchen. There was a woman dead on the floor with a knife protruding from the back of her neck.
Same as he knew other things, he knew well enough that the woman was Mrs. Bridges. He never did get her first name from Grant, but he could tell her name was ... Mary Ann ... no ... Marianne.
Her eyes were wide open. Through his steel eye and his real eye he could see the real truth, the only truth, within the kitchen.
Bodies had been carved for meat in here—there was still a corpse upon the table. It had been skinned, and halved like a cow or a pig.
The woman blinked.
Warren looked away because he didn’t want to think about what he knew he’d have to do.
He opened the walk-in freezer and saw what he’d suspected.
Everyone in town that ate at the pub and hotel had taken sacrament. They were gone.
Warren closed the steel door and put his head against it, letting the cold wash through his mind.
The woman blinked again, and he knew he couldn’t put it off any longer. Of course she wasn’t dead, and she wasn’t going to come back—only those that had gone over to the Hangman could do that, and only the blessed in blood.
Like the man out there in the fog, somewhere. But that man, that creature, he wasn’t ready for him yet.
Just like he wasn’t ready to put the woman on the floor down for good. She was paralyzed from the neck down and couldn’t talk. Maybe someone could save her, another day, another time. But not this day, and if they found her, her agonies would be immeasurable.
He knelt before her and looked her in the eye. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
He could cut her, like the chef and the waitress, but it didn’t seem right. He put his massive hand over her mouth instead, and pinched her nose shut with his finger and thumb.
“Shh,” he said. “Go easy, girl, go easy.”
Her eyes widened in terror, and he felt bad in a way that he didn’t want to feel and couldn’t afford, not when he had so much work to do. Then her eyelids fluttered and closed.
Warren held her for another couple of minutes, unable to cry but wishing he could. Maybe the woman’s husband would mourn her properly, because Warren was incapable of such an act. Murder was the most compassionate thing he could have done for her, but it still didn’t sit right.
*
He stood away from the woman’s body and something smacked him across the back of the neck.
None of his immense strength made any difference, because it was just a duster. He turned to find a furious old woman thrashing at him with a feather duster. He would have laughed, but his laughter was gone, as were his tears.
She screamed words at him, but the old woman—housekeeper, he thought—was in such a fury that he couldn’t make out what she said.
She, too, had gone over. He stepped over Marianne Bridges still body and took the maid’s head in his hands, her wiry old hair tickling his palms, and snapped her neck by twisting furiously with all his strength, so that her neck broke and her windpipe was crushed at the same instant.
Then he threw her to the floor with a roar of rage and turned and stalked from the hotel looking for Grant Bridges.
*
14.
When Grant tried to pull open the door to his car, he found it locked. He shouted and screamed for a second, then thought to check his pockets for the keys. Realized his wife had them. Cursed her for a second in his head. Looked for the first place he might be able to get help, and saw the newsagents again.
