Hangman, page 15
Suddenly, Sam didn’t think hiding out in the shed was such a good idea, but where else were they going to go?
The storage shed was unlocked. Sam whispered to William. “We're going to be all right.”
She heard his coat rustle, and understood that it was because his head was nodding up and down. She gave his hand a squeeze and let go, then headed into the shed.
This was perhaps the one building in the whole village that she could have navigated in the dark. She remembered where the light switch was, and prayed it was still there.
It was.
“Come in, William. Shut the door.”
She heard the door shutting, and she flicked the switch.
She looked around, half expecting to find two fat bodies advancing toward her, but the shed was safe. There was just the two of them, a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, and rows and rows of food.
“Help me block up the doors,” she said to William, and the two of them pushed a shelf up against the door. The doors opened outward, but it would slow someone trying to get in.
At least, that’s what Sam hoped. She remembered hoping as much before.
Sam smiled at William. “While we figure out what to do, you hungry?”
“Yep,” said William, and they both smiled for the first time in hours.
They sat down to eat, listening to the headless corpses shuffling aimlessly in the street behind.
“Are we safe?”
Sam wanted to lie to William, but he was tough, and he deserved the truth. “I don’t know,” she said.
They unwrapped chocolate bars and stuffed them into their mouths as fast as they could eat, suddenly ravenous. They ate crisps, and drank cola. Both of them burped, and couldn't help laughing, stifling their laughter against their fists.
It felt wrong, laughing, but they couldn't help it. Maybe that was when the banging started. Someone—something—thick and heavy pounding on the wooden sides of the shed.
Pounding on the shed, thought Sam. On the shed.
“Oh, God,” she managed, the laughter dying in her throat, as the door opened. A naked, skinned fat corpse was in front of the door. She saw more than she wanted to see of the flesh of the man, the red parts, the sickly white parts that must have been sinew and fat, and yes, bone, too.
The dead thing could not cry out, because it had no head, but it bashed against the wooden siding of the shed, making an awful sound.
“No—” said William. “It’s them. It’s the newsagent and his wife—”
“Don’t panic, William,” Sam told him, though he knew her heart was pounding with terror. He could feel her pulse racing in her hand.
“We can get past them. They’re slow,” she said. But he thought she was lying.
But once we get away, we’ll be blind again, he thought.
“We’ve got to find a flashlight!” he said, hoping that there would be something like that in the storage shed.
But then something tickled at him. Something ... something his dad used to say. What did Dad sometimes call the newsagents?
The tobacconist.
Get a lighter.
He pulled his hand free of Sam’s and began to root around in the shed, looking for a box of lighters. The skinned, headless newsagent continued banging against the wood. The shelves that Sam and William had pushed in front of the door seemed to confuse him. He tried to walk in, but rebounded off the shelving unit, like he was working on touch alone. And of course he was. Unlike the corpses surrounding them, he did not carry his head.
Would they keep the lighters with all the chocolate and crisps and things? He didn’t know, but ...
The banging on the shed’s sidings became more intense while William searched and the dead thing tried to get in.
“What are you looking for?” whispered Sam harshly.
“Lighter,” he said simply, because he couldn’t spare the time to explain.
Then, there, on a top shelf: a box of Swan lighters. He smiled, despite his fear, reached up, and tore the box open. He threw one to Sam.
“You clever boy,” she said. “Now we’ve got to get out. It’s going to be dark—” Sam began, but she never got to finish.
Something big was coming, something than the naked shuffling feet they’d been listening to for so long, different than the fat man and his wife, unseen as yet, the two of them pounding meaty fists on the shed.
Telling the creatures of this world where they were.
“Do you hear it?” William said.
She nodded, and he noted that her face had gone pale. It sounded like the scrape of metal on stone ...
She turned, William turning with her.
And William could feel them. Feel them coming for them. Even when they’d thought there was hope, there was none, because the Hangman’s servants were here. Right here ...
A great roar came from the back of the shed. Something powerful tore away the fence panels, but this time it wasn’t Warren Johns coming to save them.
The roar came again, and then the tin roof of the shed was wrenched free and hurled into the air. In the last of the light William saw an enormous bear, tattered, and bloodied, fur matted with grime and gore.
On the bear’s shoulders rode a monkey, and that monkey smoked a small cigarette, the kind of thing his dad, dead a lifetime, though it was only yesterday, called a dog end. A trail of smoke followed the monkey and the bear.
“Run, Sam,” said William, fear making his childish voice high. “Run.”
But there was nowhere to go.
*
52.
The bear, immense, reached into the shed like a child dipping into a toy box. It batted Sam aside and took William in one great paw up into the air.
Sam felt something in her shoulder break under the blow, and she screamed at the thing in pain and fury. But it didn’t want her.
The monkey capered on the bear’s back, and then it turned away, carrying William, leaving Sam with his screams receding into the night and the sudden darkness so absolute she could see nothing at all.
The shufflers were not gone.
The fat man and his wife were at the door. On the other side of the walls they poured through the hole in the fence. The shed, though the walls still stood, wouldn’t hold them out for long.
And somewhere in the night, she heard the first of the birdsong, and knew what it meant. This world was catching up with hers, and that meant the sun was just over the horizon, and with it, the Hangman to come. She screamed again, but this time in frustration.
She didn’t have long. Wherever the monkey and the bear were headed with William, there were ... what had William said?
Thin places, her mind dredged up, still ticking, it seemed.
If she lost William now she’d never find her way out of this world.
The lighters, she thought, then. Any use?
She couldn’t think of anything else that could be. She remembered where they had been, but had the terrible bear knocked them aside, like so much else, in its rush to get at the boy?
She didn’t know, but she did know where they had been.
The shuffling continued outside, and she heard and felt the walls of the shed rocking as they tried to get inside. They were obviously blind, but stupid, too.
“Fuck you!” she shouted at them, and this seemed to agitate them even more. She grinned, for some reason, and imagined she’d look like a madwoman, had there been any light.
But there wasn’t, and even if there was there was no one to see her. She carried right on grinning, and when she finally found a lighter and flicked the wheel, she saw something that made that grin even wider. Lighter fluid.
*
Sam realized she couldn’t hear the bear’s claws dragging over tarmac any longer, and that the birdsong was louder. She also realized she could see, despite the lighter being unlit.
Dawn was coming, and there was a dim light in the sky.
“Now, Sam,” she told herself. She wondered if her shoulder would take the strain, if the blow from the bear had broken something. But she had one good arm and her bad one still moved, even though it was painful.
She rehearsed the move in her head, like she was writing a scene.
Reach up, grab the ragged edge of the shed. Kick off the shelving unit closest. Jump to the top of the shed wall. It’d wobble when she got there and she’d have to jump straight off. She wouldn’t have time to lower herself down, because the shed was surrounded by the shuffling dead. She’d have to jump down six feet.
Turn, pull out the lighter fluid from her pocket—if it didn’t drop on the way up and down. Flick the lighter.
Run like fuck, she thought, that grin stuck to her face.
She took the edge of the shed wall in her hand and tested it to see how secure it was, then leapt before she could think too much, because sometimes, she knew, in writing or in life, you have to leap before you look.
In her head, Sam saw how it should play out once again, then leapt.
She heaved against the side of the shed, then kicked out behind her, boosting herself with her right foot, lifted her left foot to the precarious shed wall, looked down and almost lost balance because now, in the early dawn light, she saw their numbers for the first time—the headless, the maimed, the hordes of the dead surrounding the shed.
She thought, I’m lost, and tumbled down among them.
*
53.
William screamed and fought against the massive bear, but he may as well have been a baby in his mother’s arms again.
The bear ran across the tarmac, upright like a man, as dawn rose.
It’s running through time, thought William. It wasn’t a matter of there being no way back, but no when, and as he was carried through the fleeting night, he understood that the Hangman wasn’t waiting somewhere, but some when.
And these servants, nothing more than servants, were racing to beat him.
*
Of course, thought William, as they neared the Noose and Gibbet. There was only one place it could be. He saw the noose and gibbet looming out of the murky light. It expanded, the noose growing and growing until it was huge and filled with a sickly kind of light. He screamed in fear and frustration, because he knew what waited for him on the other side of that rent in reality was death, his own, and the death of this village, and a new world where the Hangman reigned.
But he could do nothing about it, and when he, the bear, and the grinning monkey hit that awful light his world shrank down to two things: survival or death.
The pain of the journey was worse than anything he’d experienced in his short life. He screamed and screamed. As they traveled through some strange nexus of realities, the immense bear that had held him so surely began to shrink. It passed him to the horrible monkey man, who in turn began to grow.
They fell, ran, and tumbled through the noose and out the other side.
William spilled from the street sweeper’s arms to the car park outside the hotel. Immediately he was on his feet and running, but he ran straight into the fist of a villager, nose to fist.
“Don’t fucking harm him!” shouted the sweeper, and the teddy bear, once impossibly large, was still big enough to take the offending man’s head clean off with one swipe of its razor claws. William saw the head tumble to the floor.
Maybe yesterday morning he might have been horrified at the sight of the man’s viscera running free on the tarmac, but no more.
The street sweeper grabbed William’s arm and dragged him into the pub. He fought, but it didn't matter. The man might have looked old, but he was still a hell of a lot stronger than a seven-year-old boy.
*
54.
Warren Johns swam in a sea of pain. His foot burned and agony pounded through his eye socket. His testicles felt like they had been crushed.
They probably had, but he wasn’t under any illusions that it mattered. But caring about the damage was different to feeling the pain.
Then he felt something else. Something he’d been waiting for: the return of the monkey and the bear—but with the boy, too. If he could have cried, he would have, because it was over before it had begun.
But then, maybe ... maybe ... Did he have any right to hope? Broken as he was, and the boy, walker or no, still just a boy?
But he was something special.
Through his agony, Warren Johns wondered just how strong the boy was.
*
William heard Warren Johns in his head before he saw him. At first it didn’t make any sense.
“Under me, under me” said the walker in the young boy’s head, over and over.
“Come on, you little fuck,” said the street sweeper, reaching down and taking up the teddy bear—now just a teddy bear—in his spare hand.
The villagers surrounded them, a mass of people, blood splattered, carrying all manner of weapons. Soulless. Gone.
“Under me,” said one walker to the other.
William was shocked at what had been done to Warren Johns when the sweeper dragged the boy into the lobby of the Noose and Gibbet.
Both eyes were missing. He was in agony. There was blood covering him from so many wounds that William couldn’t begin to count.
“Warren!” he cried, and broke free of the sweeper’s grip, ran to the big man’s side.
“Warren,” he said again, holding the walker’s head against his chest.
“Touching. Touching as hell, eh?” said the sweeper to the teddy bear, and although the teddy didn’t reply, William saw it nod.
“Under me,” said the walker again, although his lips did not move. And William understood, at last.
The walker nodded and with effort that William couldn’t imagine, with strength of will alone, the walker shifted just enough so that William could reach the knife.
*
William turned, just a little boy with a knife against a grown man. His hand shook, but he knew it was now or never. He wouldn't get another chance. Soon, the rest of the flock of the damned would be in the lobby, too. Already there were more people here than he could fight.
But he didn't have to fight all of them, did he?
William Bridges held the knife tight in his fist and shouted something. Even he didn't know what he shouted. It was just a noise he made, roaring in his throat as he ran at the sweeper.
The sweeper grinned.
“Fucking kids,” he said, lashing out with the back of his hand, just as William swung the knife. The boy, a wiry seven years old, was thrown backward across the lobby, hitting the tiles hard. He felt his teeth clack together, despite his tongue being in the way. Blood poured from his tongue down his throat.
The sweeper laughed.
“Fuck me, son, you’re useless,” he said.
But the grown man wasn’t William's target, and despite the pain he was in, and how terrified he was, William managed a bloody smile.
The teddy bear’s head, stuffing and all, fell to the floor.
*
55.
“No, no, no,” said the sweeper, and the depth of agony in his voice stopped William from running across the room to pick up the knife from where it had fallen. The sweeper’s head was in his hands, and then he looked up, and William knew everything was lost, because the sweeper wasn’t crying.
He was laughing. His laugh, full of phlegm, and disgusting, turned to a huge belly laugh.
“Thank fuck!” said the sweeper. “I thought I’d never get that monkey off my back!”
“Faithful,” he shouted, and five burly men came through the lobby door.
“You,” he said, pointing at one man with great mutton chops. “Take the boy outside.”
William kicked and struggled, but there was nothing he could do. The man was way too strong.
“You four,” said the sweeper. “Take him,” he said, pointing to Warren Johns.
*
Warren Johns waited and waited for his moment, for dawn to come and the day of the Hangman, but when it came, they just dragged him outside to the noose. It wasn't like there was going to be a ceremony, a trial, a fanfare, whatever crazy bastards did when they hanged someone.
There was no judge, just Death, jigging on the end of the Hangman's noose.
William was screaming, the crowd jeering. Hatred, amusement, and laughter in their voices.
His arms were numb, his wounds and agonies unbearable. In the end the four men led him to the noose as easily as a lamb to the slaughter.
“String him up,” said the sweeper, and the noose went around Warren Johns’s neck. The rope burned him, cut off his wind.
They strung him high.
*
56.
Sam Green’s foot lashed out at the first shuffling corpse trying to get to her. She caught the sorry creature in the kneecap and it went down.
She pushed herself up and cried out in pain from a sprained, maybe even broken, ankle.
The lighter fluid had tumbled from her pocket and was underneath the converging masses of the dead, somehow drawn to her, the headless, and the mutilated alike. There was no time to get the lighter fluid.
One of the creatures struck her high up on the cheek with surprising force. She fell to her knees, her head ringing from the blow.
Sam rolled to one side and someone—not one of the skinned, naked corpses, but a man with heavy boots and a great gash where his throat should have been—stamped on her hand. She felt something break for sure this time and she did scream. With her shoulder she pushed the man back and saw him stumble and fall to the floor, like he had no coordination. On her feet again, her hand and ankle and shoulder singing with pain, she ran through the masses of the dead, all slow, but strong enough for their blows to hurt. She came out the other side with no idea where to go.
But at the front of the newsagents there was a bright, sickly glow. It was her only chance. It was coming from the Noose and Gibbet, and time was running out. No, she thought with the slow, calculating part of her brain, despite the pain she was in. That wasn't right. Time wasn't running out. It was running to catch up.
