Hangman, page 9
There was a part of him that was utterly fascinated by Warren Johns. A walker, he'd said, and something tickled William. There was something about the word, the things he associated with it. Someone outside, someone who took things slow, maybe took the time to look around.
Walker, the giant had said, and the word resonated with William.
For a time, he forgot totally about his dad. His mum was right there with him in the church, and everything almost felt normal. The bodies ...
He didn't know. He didn't reason it out. He just knew what he felt—with Warren Johns in the church the place didn't feel evil. It just felt dirty. And they were cleaning it up. Just like when his mum made him clean his room. Kind of.
William shrugged, alone and unseen, while he thought these things. He realized cleaning his room wasn't the same as hauling corpses out of a church, but it helped to think of it like that.
Think of the heads like ... like Lego pieces. Just something to be tidied away.
He nodded to himself, ready to help at last.
Then his daddy came in.
William’s face lit up, but just for a second, because his daddy went nuts and ran at Warren, swinging two big knives at his friend.
“No, Daddy, no!” he screamed, but there was nothing he could do. Warren was too strong, his daddy running too fast.
William’s remarkable eyes saw what was going to happen, and he couldn’t do anything to stop it. The first tear fell before his daddy did.
*
John raised the shotgun up as Grant ran, but he couldn’t fire a shotgun with the kid standing so close to the black giant. Jesus, that bastard was big. Big enough to hit, easily, but John couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
He figured he’d shoot him after Grant had taken a swing at him, but then his assumptions fled and he realized something: the man wasn’t gone, was he? The girl and the boy sure as hell weren’t either.
Something was wrong, and he thought quickly that it was probably Grant. Was there anything he could do about it?
The same as everyone in the church at that moment, John could see what was going to happen, and he racked his brain, synapses firing like lightning as he thought, but what could he do?
Shoot at Grant?
No. Unacceptable, and wrong.
“Grant! Stop!” he shouted, and did the only thing he could think off. He shot over their heads. He blew a hole through the leaded window, taking Saint Christopher’s head clean off.
*
Sam’s mind ticked down, going slower, slower, until she could see everything. She was repulsed to find she wasn't just observing; she was squirreling the feel, the atmosphere, the sounds, the sights, and the smells ... everything.
Maybe the thought would have made her sick, but she didn't get past that thought, because the wild man was screaming, running at Warren.
Her remarkable ability switched off for a second with the shocked understanding that the crazy man was William's dad, and that he, or Warren, was going to end up seriously hurt.
Or dead.
William screamed, “Daddy, stop!”
Still cataloguing, still observing like a photographer standing outside of a war, snapping the dead.
She saw an old man with a shotgun, raising it.
She ducked and put her hands over her head, as though she was trying to stop something falling on her head.
Fat lot of good that’ll do when the old man blows all our heads off, she thought, mind still working fast enough, even if it was too busy watching to spend enough energy reacting. Her mind knew she should dive behind the altar, yet here she was with her arms over her head, hoping to fend off shotgun pellets.
What had William and Warren called them? Gone?
“Grant! Stop!” shouted the old man, and she knew he wasn’t gone; if he’d been like the old man with the flowers and the knife ... well, he’d have shot them all already.
The old man raised the gun higher, and still she couldn’t help but tick off what was happening, almost like making a shopping list.
The gun went off and William’s father flinched. The gun blew out something behind her and she registered the sound of glass falling, and as William’s father flinched, his feet went flying from under him and he came down with a massive thump that seemed louder than the crack of the shotgun. He cracked his head; knives, big and heavy-looking, flew from his hands, into the air, above the man, tumbling ...
Warren Johns was fast. Unbelievably fast. He leapt forward and caught one of the knives by the handle with a swift fist. He wasn’t fast enough for the other one.
*
Warren Johns didn’t move, not at first. He waited for the man with the knives to come to him. He heard William, that remarkable little boy, cry out “Daddy!”
He saw Grant Bridges running across the ice. It’d be easy enough to disarm him. Warren, six-foot-seven of him, twenty-one stone, had his feet firmly planted. Grant Bridges would sail right past him if he did it right, and no one had to get hurt. If he talked quickly. He didn’t want to hurt William’s father in front of the boy, but he would if he had no choice.
The old man with the shotgun shouted at Grant to stop, and Warren understood that Grant had found his wife’s body and thought that Warren was responsible.
He understood all of this, but he didn’t have second sight. He couldn’t speak to the dead, or know the future, and he could do nothing but watch in horror as Grant’s feet flew out from under him and the two knives flew into the air. He was quick, but he wasn’t that quick. His ribs hurt, he was cold, but that didn’t stop the one hand ... the other? He wasn’t faster than gravity. In a lunge, he managed to pluck one knife from the air, but the second knife tumbled beyond his grip and drove itself point first into Grant Bridges’s stomach.
*
28.
Terrence was the sweeper to the villagers. To Warren Johns, he was the Harbinger, the Gatekeeper, the Servant. But really, the Hangman had the right of it, because to the Hangman Terrence was just the monkey.
The monkey turned his face to the sky. The sun was maybe an hour from setting. Middle of winter, it was probably three o'clock or thereabouts.
The sun would set as it always did, but on this night and this night alone, Gallows Night would begin, and the Hangman would come back.
It was time to call on the good folk of the village of Frampton to come out of their houses, thought Terrence.
It was time to hunt.
The small teddy bear that now sat atop his cart grinned.
“Come, monkey,” said the teddy bear. “Earn your keep.”
“Yup,” said the man known as many things, and pushed the cart off into the fog and started knocking. Knocking loud enough to rouse the dead, but really, he only wanted the gone.
The dead were useless to him. They were just food, and he’d had his fill.
*
29.
“Get it out!” screamed Grant. “Jesus, get it out!”
“Daddy!”
Sam watched the whole thing, still in a crouch before the altar. Glass still fell from the tableau behind her, tinkling down on a brass cross amid the severed heads.
“Don’t take it out.”
Warren Johns, his voice harsh and cold.
“Yup,” said the old guy with the shotgun, walking up the aisle. “Don’t know what kind of damage it’s done.”
Warren Johns knelt before Grant, looking at him sadly. “Can’t get help, Grant. No one’s going anywhere until this thing’s over.”
“Fuck you, you murderer,” said Grant.
Warren still held the bigger of the two knives in one massive fist. Would have been the easiest thing in the world for him to finish Grant. But he just threw the knife behind him.
“Grant, listen to me. I know you’re in pain. I know about your wife. But I didn’t kill her. If you’d stopped, instead of running away—”
“It’s true, Daddy,” said William. “Me and Sam, we saw it. Was the crazy woman.”
Grant’s head sank back against the cold flagstones. Tears trickled out of his eyes, but whether it was sorrow or pain or pure anguish, Sam couldn’t tell.
“I saw it, too,” she added. “It wasn’t Warren,” she said. “He saved us.”
“Get this knife out,” said Grant.
Warren Johns looked at the old man. The old man looked back. Shook his head. Sam came closer, and she could see what Grant refused to look at. The knife was buried deep, and the blood that flowed was near black.
“If he doesn’t get some help—” she said quietly to Warren, so that William would not hear.
Warren nodded.
“Get me an ambulance—”
“Okay,” said Warren, but shook his head again at the old man, like he knew the old man was tougher than the rest, like the old man would understand.
Sam saw that he did. She understood, too. There wasn’t anyone to help. There wasn’t any quick fix. William Bridges’s father was a dead man, and the only people who didn’t know it were Grant and William.
*
The old man, John, stayed with Grant. Sam drew Warren to one side.
“We can’t help him, can we?” It was obvious the wound was deep and had hit something vital, maybe even his liver.
Warren shook his head. No.
“What do you think we should do?”
Warren shook his head again. “We’ve got one chance, and one chance only. Got to clear the church. We need sanctuary. There’s no help coming. No one’s going to come and save us. We have to do it ourselves.”
“He’s William’s father. The boy’s already lost his mother.”
“I can’t do anything for him. Keep him comfortable. Keep him warm.”
Grant cried out behind them as John took off one of his coats and laid it under his head for a pillow.
“He’s going to die, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” said Warren. “Yes, he is. But the rest of you don’t have to.”
Sam noted that Warren didn’t include himself in their number. She wondered what fate had in store for the big man. She thought he almost looked bulletproof. Maybe he was. He hadn’t even flinched when John fired.
Maybe he wasn’t even human, she wondered. She would have laughed at the thought, but it didn’t seem so funny, not with a man dying behind her and the bodies of the dead still hanging like meat from the church ceiling.
Sanctuary, she thought. Such a beautiful word.
She nodded to Warren Johns and turned to take up a corpse. Back to work. Back to work, because even she felt the sun going down, and like Warren said—maybe they didn't all have to die.
*
30.
The sweeper could sense it. The sun going down over the horizon. He could see it, but the feeling was stronger than the sight. The quality of the light changed, and the fog glowed.
The little, scruffy, dirty teddy bear at the front of his cart seemed a little bigger; the dirty, unkempt old street sweeper, a little smaller.
“Time?” asked the sweeper.
The teddy pulled itself from the front of the cart and sat atop it, looking back at Terrence.
“Time to call out the faithful,” said the teddy bear. Its voice was gruff. It wasn’t the cute voice that a child might assign to their favorite toy. It was a voice with gravel in it.
“Time,” said the teddy bear.
*
31.
“Stay with him,” said Warren, kneeling in front of William. “Can you do that?”
William nodded. He was a brave boy. “Is Daddy going to be all right?”
“Of course he is,” lied Warren.
Warren felt like a shit, but he had to be cold as the night that was coming. Gallows Night was maybe an hour away, and still he had not prepared. The church needed to be cleansed.
But could he do it in time?
Sam carried the last of the bodies out, with John’s help.
Warren watched the little boy go to his father, who was pale. Dying. There was nothing he could do about the death or the boy’s sorrow. If he could, he would have finished it, like he had for the poor boy’s mother. But he could not. There were certain things he would not do, and even if it meant leaving the man to suffer through a slow death, he would not kill him in front of the boy.
Warren turned away from the boy leaning over his father. He turned away from Sam, unable to bear the look of pity in her eyes. Turned away from the old man with the shotgun. Instead of facing the sad humanity behind him, he went back to what he knew. His work.
He took from the altar of the church as many heads as he could carry, stacking them high in his arms, and carried them out into the dusk. He walked back and forth, back and forth, carrying those frozen heads, their eyeballs frosted over and the ichor on the necks black in the low light. Carried them forth on his own, then later, with help from Sam and John.
All the while the little boy sat on the floor next to his father and Warren tried to think of something he could do. He could have tried to staunch the wound a little better, he thought, but to what end? The man was dead—still breathing, still thinking, but dead, nonetheless.
Grant Bridges’s eyes were closed and his chest rose and fell slowly. The boy knelt beside him, crying quiet tears. That boy was something special. Perhaps, for all Warren’s lies, the boy knew what was going to happen to his father.
Perhaps.
But Warren, watching William cry as he carried his terrible load out into the rising night, Warren thought he might just need that boy more than the girl called Sam and the old man called John. In fact, he thought, the town might need the little boy more than it needed him.
*
The job of clearing the church of defilement was finally done. The pile of bodies outside the church stood as a testament to the evil that had befallen the small town of Frampton.
Warren wanted to burn them, but what he wanted and what he was going to get were entirely different things.
He walked back inside, the icy church finally clean of filth, and saw that the boy was still with his father.
He could feel night upon them. The sun was down. Gallows Night was here. There was no more time. The gone would be coming. He would be coming. And together they would draw down the man, the Hangman. Then, maybe none of them would see the dawn.
William, he thought, watching the boy. Another walker. Why?
He stood over Grant. Grant was silent. His chest heaved. A pool of blood spread around him. The kindest thing would be maybe to nudge that knife a little, or even pull it, so the blood would come faster. Grant Bridges wouldn’t see the dawn no matter what they did.
Cold, Warren knew, but necessary.
“William,” he said. “Come with me.”
William turned to Warren, tears running down his face. “Daddy ... Mummy—”
“I know,” said Warren, “but you’ve got to be a big boy now. You understand? Come with me. I need to talk to you. Like, man to man. Can you do that? Listen to me?”
“I can,” said William, and Warren marveled, not for the first time, at just how resilient children could be.
He drew William away from everyone else. Sam sat, speaking low to John, who held his shotgun and watched the door they had barricaded with a heavy old pew against the crazed villagers.
“William,” said Warren. “You see the other places, don’t you?”
William stared at Warren. “Mummy and Daddy said not to talk about it.”
Warren nodded. “Mummy and Daddy—” He had to stop himself from saying “were’.
“Your mum and your dad, they’re right. But I’ll tell you a secret, and you’ll know you can trust me, okay?”
William looked unsure, but nodded.
“I saw the house with the plant man—”
William’s eyes went wide. “Mummy says it’s okay to tell you,” he said after a while.
It was Warren’s turn to be surprised.
“You’re a medium, too?”
“I don’t know what that is,” said William.
“You speak to spirits? The dead?” It was a measured question. He didn’t want to remind the boy that his mother was dead, but he saw no other way and time was too damn short.
“I see Mummy. Not all of them. That would be silly.”
Warren almost laughed. The boy wasn’t just a walker. He was something more special. And he had to get him out. Suddenly, it wasn’t just about saving them. It was about saving someone that came along once in a lifetime.
It was possible the boy could be even stronger than him—if they could just make it through the night.
“Come with me, William.”
*
William looked across at the man Warren as they knelt before the altar.
“We need to sanctify the altar,” said the big man. He had a good face, and his shining steel eye was so cool. He had wiry hair. William wondered what it felt like on his head while Warren spoke.
“Do you know what that means?”
“No,” said William, shaking his head earnestly.
“It’s been defiled, William, which means something holy and clean has been made unholy and dirty. Does that make sense?”
“With the heads, and the blood.”
William liked the big man. He talked to him like an adult. He didn’t like what was happening to his daddy, but while he looked at the big man, for some reason things seemed to feel better.
He glanced over his shoulder to his daddy, pale, bleeding. He was old enough to understand that he was badly hurt.
“Yes,” said Warren. “With the heads and the blood. And we have to fix it.”
“Is it broken?”
The big man smiled, and William couldn’t help but smile back.
“Sort of. We’ll fix it, all right, but I’m going to need your help, and for that, you’ll have to trust me, William.”
