Hangman, page 14
That wasn’t the sound of a door slamming.
It was the sound of a body hitting the floor.
One of the skinned bodies fell down from its hook.
It rose.
Sam screamed.
William came in and he saw the headless corpse rise, then he screamed, too.
“Give us … give us …” said the heads.
Both froze, despite the horrors they’d seen, because this was something else entirely. This was something that just couldn’t be. The dead didn’t rise.
“Sacrament,” finished the heads, and their teeth began to gnash.
Sam screamed again, as the headless corpse walked toward her.
Blind, she thought. Blind. Move to one side. Get out of the way. Get past it and to William.
She stepped to one side, out of the way of the shambling blind monstrosity. She clambered over the pews.
The corpse walked past her, shuffling its feet, right up to the altar, where it picked up one of the heads. It turned to her.
“Feed us ... feed ...”
Sam leapt over the last few pews and swept William into her arms and ran. She didn’t know where, but as long as it wasn’t the church, it didn’t seem to matter. Nothing mattered now. She realized tears streamed down her face as she ran, because in this world and theirs, there was no help coming, no respite.
It was just the two of them.
*
46.
Warren tried to fight the agony thumping from the wound where his eye had been torn from the socket. It hurt all the way through his head, right into the back of his neck. He shook and sweated, from the pain, and trying to fight against unconsciousness.
He had something to hold on to though. The knife had clattered down near his leg. He couldn’t see it, because he was totally blind now, but he’d heard it fall, on the other side of the body of the woman who’d tried to kill him.
When all was lost, sometimes hope came along. Warren knew this. He’d been in a bad way before. But he didn’t shrink in the face of fear. Yet both his arms were tied tight, and the knife was by his hip. He couldn’t see any way to get to the knife.
His salvation was right there next to him, and he couldn’t do anything about it.
*
47.
The street sweeper wandered his dark, mildewed halls, touching things as he went. The teddy bear sat in the pocket of his dirty yellow high-visibility jacket, its head peering out at the world around, taking it all in. The teddy bear was animated, excited, in a way that made Terrence chuckle, a low laugh full of phlegm.
The little man, the boy-child, the special one; he’d gone behind into the Hangman’s domain. But the Hangman was ... what? Dormant? Sleeping?
Terrence didn’t know.
“But we can’t take the chance of him fucking it up, can we?” said the teddy bear.
“No, sir, no. No indeed,” said Terrence, nodding his head in avid agreement.
“Then let’s get fucking on with it,” said the teddy bear.
Terrence nodded again.
The house was thin. There wasn’t much to it. One second, the sweeper and the teddy bear were standing in the hall of the tumbledown house, the next, they were gone, backwards, to where the Hangman waited for his faithful to wake him.
*
There were many thin places in the world, but the darkest places of all, like Terrence’s adopted home, were thinner than most. Terrence, the grinning teddy bear in his pocket, walked backwards, into the shadows.
When Sam and William had gone through, they had climbed up, through plant man’s house, into a world of white and cold.
When Terrence went through, he went into the world of night. The same world, that other place. But at a different time, a time of fog and starless nights, a time of murder without respite.
The time of the Hangman.
The two servants of the Hangman began to change. Terrence shrank, screaming from the pain and the ecstasy of returning to his form, the form his soul dictated. He grew a tail, and fur, and changed into a monkey, but one unlike the world had ever seen. His incisors were long, for tearing flesh, and he had claws at the end of useful little hands. Heavily muscled, he leapt and somersaulted in place, beating the ground with his hands.
The teddy bear grew, and grew, to something almost unimaginably large. Again, like a mortal bear, but with hideous fur and thick long teeth and claws, maybe ten or twelve feet tall on its hind legs. It stretched up high, bones cracking into place.
“Up, monkey,” it growled.
And the monkey, with a yellowed dog end behind its ear, leapt onto the bear’s shoulders. Then, monkey and bear set off to hunt.
*
48.
Sam and William ran from the church and out into the dark and starless night of this new and terrible world.
“What the fuck?” said Sam, skidding to a halt because she could not see anything. The darkness was absolute, where only moments ago light had streamed through the stained-glass relief of Saint Christopher looking down on the defiled altar.
“Sam, Sam!” said William. “I can’t see you!”
The panic in his voice spurred Sam on, though she suddenly felt chills running up her back, because she could hear the headless corpses thumping to the floor in the church behind them. She could imagine them stalking them through the darkness, following them though they possessed no sight or hearing.
Well, in this blackness, that just made them even.
“Follow my voice,” Sam said, trying to remain calm—at least until she could feel William’s hand in hers. God, she hoped the hand that grasped hers was that of a warm little boy, and not that of a cold corpse.
“Here, William, come to me. Come quickly!”
She heard his shoe slip on the ice, and figured where he was from hearing alone. In an instant she wondered whether to reach out for him—whether she would catch him or knock him down instead, unable to see well enough for her reactions to work. But her writer’s mind was ticking, and told her hand where to go. She grabbed hold of William’s coat and pulled him into her, in tight.
“It’s okay, honey,” she told the shaking boy, holding him against her hip. She wished she could have shown him a smile to reassure him, but the only tools she had for that were her voice and her touch. She used both.
“Now, listen to me. We’re not going to panic, okay? We’re going to follow the path—we’ll be able to feel it under our feet. Then we’ll find somewhere with light—” As she said this, she became aware of shuffling feet behind them.
“Now walk,” she said, and didn’t allow any argument, because the headless corpses were coming for them, right behind them in the dark, drawn towards them by some magic she couldn’t understand. But then if the dead could rise, why shouldn’t they be able to sense the living?
“Feed us,” the heads had said.
She didn’t want to find out which parts they’d eat first, should the bodies catch them and drag them back for sacrament.
*
“Can we talk, do you think?” whispered William.
“I don’t think it makes any difference, honey,” said Sam, holding too tightly on to the boy’s hand. She was probably hurting him, she knew, but she couldn't relax her grip. It was, perhaps, the only thing between her and bolting from the following corpses in blind panic.
She wondered if it was true—that the corpses, carrying their chattering heads, didn't need sound to follow them—but even when they’d walked on quiet feet along the black path, that horrible shuffling sound had been right there behind them. Not rushing, but implacable and untiring.
Sam sensed that they were off the church path from the feel of the footing. Gravel became smooth road, and now that they were off the narrow path she felt that the shuffling behind them came a little faster—a little more urgently.
The darkness was so complete that even though she knew houses lined this street, she could not see them at all. She played back the experience of the day before—if it had even been a day in the true sense of the word—but then she realized she was hungry, and almost laughed that she could think of her hunger with the dead stalking her through the night.
But at that thought she remembered one place where she was sure there was light. A place they could hide, eat, and maybe be safe if even only for a little while.
She closed her eyes, because they were useless, and she thought better with her eyes shut anyway.
A place that had once been dark, but now could be sanctuary. The storage shed at the back of the newsagents. A straight run from the church path to the rear fence. Would the fence be down, where Warren had torn the panel out? Would that action be reflected in this crazed world, like others were?
The simple answer was that she didn’t know.
The shuffling seemed to be getting closer. It wasn’t just one corpse. There were many of them, and they were closing.
“William?” she said.
“They’re close, aren’t they?” His voice was shaking. It was amazing that the boy hadn’t been terrified before, but he certainly was now. So was she.
“Yes. Now, you have to trust me, okay?”
“I do,” he said without a second’s hesitation.
“Then run with me. Straight. Follow my lead. We’re not going to run fast, but fast enough.”
“We’ll run into something.”
“We won’t, because I remember the way. I’m good like that,” she said, putting a sense of a smile into the statement that she hoped William would pick up on.
He did. He tried to be brave, for her and him both.
“Okay,” he said.
“Now,” she said, and tugged him along by the hand as they ran from the mutilated dead.
*
49.
Warren Johns slipped his foot to one side, his knee cracking. He tried to shift to get the knife. He didn’t feel it under his foot. It was too far away.
He panted from the exertion, and knew he wasn’t going to be able to get the blade with his feet. Uncomfortably, he managed to get his foot out from underneath him. When they came for him, he didn’t want to have numb legs. He had to give himself the best chance of fighting that he could. Already both his hands and arms had become numb from being bound for so long.
Drifting in and out of consciousness, he didn’t know how long had passed on Gallows Night. All he knew was that the cries from outside the hotel had tailed off after a while—the dead must outweigh the living now.
He strained again, wondering if he could hear birdsong, his heart hammering in his great chest. He managed to get over far enough with his buttocks, sit on the tip of the knife, and drag it, panting, sweating, despite the freezing fog swirling around the lobby of the Noose and Gibbet. Waves of nausea washed over him, but eventually the knife was underneath him. He grinned, and surprised himself that he could still manage to find satisfaction when his death was assured. Then, drifting on a sea of pain and over to somewhere else, a dream within a dream.
*
Warren slid under the canopy of sleep, but not all the way. Through the thin veil he could still see, in the way that people with full sight can see within a dream.
The fog lifted. The door was shut to his left. There was no blood, nor were there bodies; there was no him. He was dreaming a world in which he did not exist.
Dreaming of a world past, the world behind. He’d seen it before. He knew what it was. From the half light, the sense of time’s passage, always racing to catch up the real world.
Someone tried the door. The door stuck. And then Sam Green and William Bridges walked in.
Warren tried to shout at them, to tell them to run, but of course, he wasn’t there. He was just seeing the world behind—the only world he’d ever see, until his death in the morning—he heard, somewhere distant, the sound of birdsong, louder than bells tolling.
But then, hope, yet again.
Because he saw Sam stoop, and although he couldn’t hear what she said to William, he could see in the way of dreams what it was that she picked up.
*
Warren was woken from his dream with a kick in his rib. His rib had already been cracked when Grant Bridges had hit him with his car the morning before. Warren cried out for the first time. His defenses were low. He was hurting badly. His arms, bound and numb, were useless and he was completely blind.
But still not afraid.
“Brought you some grub. You’ll need your strength, come sunrise.”
“Fuck off,” he told the man—an old man judging by his voice.
“Come on now. Play the white man, eh?”
Warren laughed and as he did the old man shoved something into Warren’s mouth. Warren tasted human flesh and spat out the morsel. He heard it hit the tiles with a wet thump.
“That was an ear. Got all sorts, if you don’t like that.”
Warren clamped his teeth down. He wouldn’t eat.
“Dave,” said a second person, and Warren realized there were two ... no ... three of them. But he didn’t smell the monkey and the bear. It wasn’t his time yet. Beneath him, he could feel the knife.
Would he be able to get it, use it, if they let him free? He couldn’t feel his arms at all.
“He’s already taken sacrament,” said one man, speaking to the one called Dave.
“What?”
“What’s that, round his chops?”
Someone kicked over the body beside Warren. “Wow,” said a younger voice. “You took a chunk out of Mrs. Elgood!”
Warren tried to think, but through the pain, it was difficult. Were these people, these gone, right? Had Mrs. Elgood’s blood run down his throat when he’d killed her with his teeth?
“Better feed him up. Just in case.”
“He’s not going to open up. Might need a bit of ministration.”
“Yup,” said the older man.
And someone drove a knife into Warren’s foot. He opened his mouth to scream. Someone else popped something sickly into his mouth and he gagged, retched, but it was sticky and wet and some ran down the back of his throat.
“Good enough, I think,” said the old man. The younger one laughed.
The other one, the third man, grunted in amusement and kicked Warren hard enough in the balls to make the big man throw up.
*
50.
“Can you smell them, monkey?” said the bear.
“I can smell them,” said the monkey. “They’re in the night.”
“So are we.”
“Run, bear, run,” said the monkey, and they ran through the night, time shifting, searching for the walker. William Bridges.
Searching for him to kill him dead.
*
51.
Sam pulled William to a halt. He didn’t question it. She could feel his panic, his terror. She felt the same, but he was her responsibility, and she’d do whatever she could for him. Even if it meant her death, she’d save this boy. She knew she could do that, if it came to it.
“But it won’t come to it,” she said.
“Sam?”
“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing. Hold my hand. Don’t let go, okay? I’m just searching for something.”
It was completely and utterly dark. Her eyes hadn’t adjusted to the lack of light, because it was truly pitch-black—there was no moon. There were no stars. No streetlights or lights in houses or passing traffic. Nothing. Absolute darkness reigned.
She reached out her hand and felt a wooden fence, maybe six feet high.
Is it the right one, Sam?
Of course it was, because it had to be. Behind them, she could hear the corpses coming closer, searching, implacable. Would they be able to find them, over the fence? Would they be safe enough to wait for daybreak?
They’d have to be. They’d have to.
There wasn’t anywhere else. They could break into a home, but in a place where the mad lived and the sane were hunted and eaten, she didn’t want to risk trying any one of those houses they’d passed.
“Right, William, trust me, okay?”
“Okay,” he said, and she smiled, because he didn’t even ask a question.
“Here,” she said, taking his hand and putting it against the fence. “I want to drop you over the other side of this fence. Remember the shed? It’s behind here. We can hide there.”
“I don’t want to go back in there. That man—”
“I know, William, but the man won’t be there. Remember, this is a different world. Things are different here, okay?”
“If you think so—” he said. Still, he didn’t question, but he didn’t sound sure. She was, though. She took him under the armpits and hefted him to the top of the fence. Now she was cold and tired and hungry, she felt every pound of his weight in her arms and back.
“I’ve got the top,” said William.
“You think you can drop over?”
“I can’t see what I’m dropping onto!”
“There’s nothing there. It’ll be a little way down. Might hurt a bit, but William? They’re coming, okay?”
“Okay,” he said, and without another word dropped blind from the fence.
Sam heard his grunt. “William?”
“I’m fine,” he said, and she smiled because he sounded pleased with himself, despite the terror stalking them, despite the darkness.
“Well done. I’m coming over.”
She heard him shuffle carefully to one side.
Sam took the top of the fence in her hands and heaved herself up. Then she put one foot over, then the other, and dropped down with a thud.
“Where are you?” she said.
“Here,” he said, and she jumped as he put his hand on her borrowed coat.
She felt around until she got his hand, then started to walk toward him. She could feel the shed. It was right beside her. The panel she’d kicked out in their world would still be the same. They had to walk around to the other side.
