Part 2 (1/2)
”But Dad-”
”We'll get another f.u.c.king bird, OK?”
”Keitha” Audrey's voice, calmer, but still trembling. ”Keith, stop swearing at the girlsa please.”
Keith's voice cut through the air sharp as a knife. ”Audrey! Get in that f.u.c.king car!”
”I still haven't locked the back door of the house. I thought-”
”For pity's sake, womana”
John took the path to the lane, keen to see if Elizabeth was still there, but he walked with his head to the right, trying to look through the hedge at the fabulous sequence of events unfolding next door. The hedge was too thick. All he could rely on were the sounds of the fear-shot voices. This time it was like listening to an old time radio play.
Keith screeched, ”Stella, where on earth are you going? Stella! Get back in that d.a.m.n car. Now!”
”I'm getting Archie.”
”I told you! Forget the birda” Then under his breath, but loud enough to carry through hawthorn. ”Oh, f.u.c.king Jesus H. Christ.”
If the Haslems operated a swear box (as once the Newtons tried to implement when Paul went through a 's.h.i.+t this' and 'b.a.s.t.a.r.d that' stage when he was eight), then Keith Haslem was well on the way to personal bankruptcy.
”Get back in the d.a.m.n car!”
”Keith, stop swearing,” Audrey begged piteously. ”The neighbors will-”
”I don't care about the f.u.c.king neighbors. If the neighbors had any f.u.c.king sense they'd be clearing out, tooa Stellaa Stella! Oh, all right then, but the cage will have to go on your knee. Credit cards! Credit cards! Audrey did you pick up the credit cards?”
If the neighbors had any f.u.c.king sense they'd be clearing out, tooa John's curiosity was wriggling like a toad on a hook now. Why the h.e.l.l should we be leaving the village? What on earth was happening?
John quickened his pace. That tickle of disquiet had become a fullblown itch. He'd rest easier once he'd seen Elizabeth.
Meanwhile, at a break in the hedge he glimpsed Keith's bald head, now a dangerous shade of blueberry and slick with perspiration. If the man didn't slow down, he'd drop dead in his tracks, with a ruptured aorta spurting like a garden hose.
The man shouted, ”Audry, get a move on! If we don't get away from here now we'll be too late!”
The world, John decided without a shadow of a doubt, was turning very weird, very fast.
2.
John opened the garden gate. Up the lane to the left, the old man in pajamas and straw hat still hobbled up the lane in tiny mincing steps as if his life depended on it. Now John saw Martin Marcello, who ran the village post office. He followed the old man, that much was clear, but he walked slowly enough not to gain on him.
”Curious.” John murmured to himself.
There was no sign of Elizabeth up the lane. He decided to turn right downhill. Possibly Elizabeth had cycled toward the village on the off chance she could find one of her playmates. Even so, she'd been told dozens of times not to go into the village without John, Val or, at a pinch, Paul.
Seconds after heading downhill along the track John nearly lost his life to the hood of the Haslems' car as it sped out of the driveway. John leapt back. Like a photograph the image stayed glued to his mind of the terrified looking family in the car: Keith clutching the steering wheel, his eyes wide, his mouth still hammering away in over-drive as he shouted at his family and maybe the world in general. Only the sound of his voice was now drowned beneath the howl of the car's motor.
At least with a nod toward neighborliness John lifted a hand at the Haslems in greeting but they ignored him. They were locked inside some private drama; nothing else mattered now. Seemingly, they were on a mission from G.o.d (and running well behind schedule), or they were fleeing for their very lives. John noticed the canary in its cage on one of the laps of the little girls. In the end it hadn't been left to starve.
John continued down the hill, the loose stones rolling and grating beneath his feet. The lane itself, according to a plaque at the junction, was two thousand years old. Roman road engineers had run this track as straight as a pool cue ninety miles across what would be England's waistline linking Leeds with Whitby on the coast. Along it had marched conquering legions. Most of the road was lost beneath fields and cities now, of course. But here for half a mile or so it still ran straight and white as bone. Faint grooves could be seen that marked the wear of ancient chariot wheels. Over the centuries it had been downgraded to little more than a track and the once mighty Via Constantine was even demoted by name to merely the Back Lane. Where travelers once might have seen a discarded legionnaire's javelin or come across a coin bearing the head of Caesar now there were the usual scattering of gum wrappers, cigarette b.u.t.ts and shards of broken beer bottle that caught the morning sun in bursts of dazzling light. Across an edging block that an Etruscan navvy would have levered into place with hands as hard as boot leather there was a condom. It had been stretched out of shape to near shocking dimensions. (”Oh, look, Dad,” Elizabeth had exclaimed on seeing it yesterday. ”Someone's lost a pink balloon!” ”No, sweetheart, don't pick it upa” ”Why not, Dad?” ”Youa” He'd paused. ”You don't know where it's been, hon.”) Flanking the lane were the houses of bank managers, lawyers, businessmen-and a writer of true-life crime stories, namely one John Douglas Newton, age thirty-five. A man with a little more than three days-that's seventy-two little hours-to find a follow-up to Blast His Eyes. His agent had been right when he'd telephoned John after reading the Blast His Eyes ma.n.u.script and announced 'the book's going to be big box officea d.a.m.n big box officea' and he was right. d.a.m.n right. Was his agent right now? That already Tom was predicting Without Trace would be dismissed as a warmed over collection of missing persons stories? h.e.l.l. Tom had sowed the seeds of doubt. John was beginning to catch a scent surrounding his new book. And that scent was definitely hinting Crock O' s.h.i.+t.
This wasn't a nice experience.
As if seeing himself from outside his body, say from that sparrow's eye view as it sat high on the telephone line, he saw himself walking down the road in a T-s.h.i.+rt, jeans (with a fist size hole in one knee), and wearing untied shoes that flopped on his feet.
Witness one John Douglas Newton. In three days Mr. Newton must deliver a hotshot idea to his literary agent. Meanwhile he's in search of one absent daughter, age nine, with a pa.s.sion for Killer Whales and strawberry ice cream. John Douglas Newton, a man innocently walking along a peaceful country lane in the old country. A lane that will take him into a territory populated with fear and miserya a place that lies between darkness and lighta Yeah, he thought, all that's needed right now is the pitter-patter notes of the Twilight Zone theme to come tip-toeing out of those trees across there.
Ignoring the mind chatter, John pressed on. Now the main road that cut across the Back Lane was in sight. Beyond that, the village proper with its stone cottages, pub and green bounded on one side by a pond. It would be the English Tourist Board's vision of the idyllic rural village if it wasn't for the vast Necropolis-AKA City of the Dead-on the hill. A hundred acre cemetery once served by its own miniature railway system that pa.s.sed beneath an archway on which was inscribed: BOUND FOR GLORY.
Now there was sense that the old lane was getting ready to run underground, the level of the lane dropped, the banks rose so he was fully enclosed on three sides with only a strip of open blue sky above him. In the distance came the tolling of the cemetery bell.
It was then that he found Elizabeth.
As simply as that.
Her bicycle had been dropped on its side. Elizabeth lay on her back on a sunlit swathe of dandelions and clover.
John Newton took one look at her, and in a curiously dislocated way, and more in surprise than shock, said to himself: ”My G.o.d. Her throat's been cut.”
CHAPTER 3.
1.
Her throat's been cuta At that moment the world vanished. Or at least to John Newton it did. The lane, the trees, the stone cottages, the swan on the village pond, even the blue sky. Everything blurred and was sucked to some other place.
Everything, that is, but Elizabeth.
He stared down at his daughter. She lay with her eyes wide open. Blood covered her throat in a broad wet slick. From there it drenched her yellow T-s.h.i.+rt.
There was so much soil mixed with the blood. It looked as if a handful of brown dirt had been poured onto it, so it still stood proud and dry of the blood flooding down his daughter's body.
Her throat's been cuta The words churned through his mind. Now they made no sense to him.
All he could do was stand, starea while those dumb, meaningless stupid words rolled round the inside of his uncomprehending skull.
Her throat's been cuta At that moment Elizabeth sighed. She pulled herself onto one elbow as if she were in bed waiting for her goodnight kiss.
All of a sudden words gushed from his lips. It was the question parents always ask: ”Elizabeth! What happened to you?”