The Beast

‘Kyle.’ Ameena spoke the word quietly, but I couldn’t miss the tremble in her voice.

‘What?’

She didn’t reply, just nodded towards the back garden. Towards the streaks of dark red that coloured the snow.

I was out of the room in a heartbeat, bounding down into the darkness at the bottom of the stairs. The electricity tingled across my scalp, and this time I didn’t resist. I imagined the board being torn from the front door, pictured the wood and the rusty nails being yanked sharply away.

The board gave a crack and fell outwards as I approached and a dim, watery light seeped in. I hurried outside and found myself stumbling, knee-deep, through snow. I hesitated, just for a moment, wondering how this much of the stuff could possibly have fallen in one night, but then I was running again, heading for the fence, no longer worried about being seen.

Ameena crunched along behind me, struggling to keep up. The snow slowed me down, but I reached the fence in no time and vaulted over it.

I plopped down into the marshmallow whiteness of my garden, staggered forwards, then set off running again, making for the back door. The snow was falling heavily, making it hard to see more than a few metres in any direction. I was running through the red streaks almost before I saw them. Their slick wetness sparkled atop the snow, slowly taking on a pinkish hue as more flakes fell.

I looked up, blinking against the blizzard, and saw the back door stood ajar. Not bothering to wait for Ameena, I crunched up the stone steps, through the open door, and into a blood-soaked warzone that had once been my kitchen.

an? Nan?’ I raced through the kitchen, past the upturned table and the broken chairs, past the blood-spattered cabinets and the shattered glass.

‘Good grief !’ Ameena muttered, appearing at the back door just as I charged through into the living room.

‘Nan, where are you?’ I called. My voice was absorbed by the silence of the house. The living room was a mess, but not in the same league as the kitchen. The coffee table was in pieces and the TV was face down on the carpet, but there was no blood. No Nan, either.

I made for the stairs, then pulled myself together enough to collect one of the legs of the broken coffee table. It was a short piece of wood – about forty-five centimetres from top to bottom – but it was thick and it was heavy and I’d be able to do some damage with it if I had to.

‘Any sign of her?’ Ameena asked, joining me at the bottom of the stairs. She’d had the same idea as me, and now carried a knife she’d lifted from the wooden block in the kitchen. She held it with the blade flat against her wrist, half-concealed, but ready to strike.

‘Not yet,’ I said. I called up the stairs. ‘Nan? Nan, are you up there?’

A groan. A whimper. Faint, but there. I was halfway up the stairs when I heard it again, three-quarters of the way before I realised it had come from the living room.

I turned, bounded back down half a dozen steps, and that’s when I realised I had been wrong. There was blood in the living room. So much blood.

It started on the wall just by the kitchen door, a metre and a half off the ground, and streaked straight upwards – a thick smear of it in one continuous line across the ceiling.

The trail stopped almost exactly above the couch. The whimper came again and I took the last of the stairs in a single leap. Ameena was already pulling the couch aside. I saw the police uniform before I was halfway there.

She lay on her back, her hands on her belly, one eye wide open, one battered shut. Blood pumped through her fingers, ran down her arms, seeped into the carpet, drip, drip, drip. Half of her face was a swollen mess of purple and black. Her one open eye stared upwards, but not at the ceiling, at something beyond the ceiling that only she could see.

Her breathing came in shallow gasps, two or three a second, in-out, in-out, in-out.

‘What do we do?’ Ameena asked.

‘Call an ambulance.’

‘What? But... they’ll bring more cops. You’ll get—’

‘Call an ambulance!’ I shouted. ‘She’s dying!’

There was a moment’s hesitation, and for just a fraction of a second I thought she was going to refuse. But then she was clambering over the couch, reaching for the sideboard, picking up the phone.

I knelt down by the policewoman, wishing I knew how to help her. Her eye was bulging, the pupil fully dilated so there was no colour left, just a circle of black. I had been right last night – she was young. Late twenties at the most.

‘It’s dead.’

I looked up. Ameena was standing over us, the phone in her hand. ‘No dial tone. Weather, maybe?’

Maybe.

Maybe not.

I touched one of the policewoman’s hands, meaning to move it aside so I could see how badly she was hurt – as if the pints of blood painting the inside of the house weren’t enough of a clue.

The moment my fingers touched hers, though, she grabbed my hand and squeezed it tight, clinging to it as if it was the only thing anchoring her to life. I didn’t pull away, just held on to her and let her hold on to me. I wanted to ask her what had happened and where Nan was, but I knew I’d get no answer.

Instead I said the only thing I could think of. A lie. ‘It’s OK. You’re going to be OK.’

I watched a single tear form in her open eye. It trickled sideways, meandering across her temple and over her ear. By the time it dripped on to the carpet, her hand no longer gripped on to mine. I carefully rested it back on her stomach, closed over her eye, and stood up.

‘Someone else dead,’ I said, after a long silence, ‘because of me.’

I hated the matter-of-fact tone of my voice. Hated the fact I wasn’t shaking or crying or screaming about the woman’s death. The cold fact of it was, I’d seen worse.

‘You don’t know that, kiddo.’

But we both knew I was right.

It was happening again. Someone – or something – had come looking for me, and another innocent person had found themselves caught in the crossfire.

I took hold of the table leg again, tightening my grip until my knuckles shone white. I set my jaw, clenching my teeth together. Someone else dead. Because of me.

The stairs passed in a haze. I was at the top before I realised I’d moved. The lights were on up here, all four doors open. I looked in my bedroom, in my wardrobe, under my bed. Nothing there, so I moved on, no longer interested in a trip down Memory Lane. I needed to find Nan and I wanted to find whoever had killed the policewoman. Nothing else mattered.

Nan’s old room, empty. Bathroom, empty. No damage to either and no blood stains on the walls. I turned to the last door and that’s when I did hesitate, taking a second to compose myself before stepping inside Mum’s bedroom.

Her bed was unmade. It must’ve been that way since the morning she’d sent me to stay with Marion. The morning she’d been attacked by the Crowmaster, beaten so badly she was still in a coma. And all because of me.

Her dressing gown lay across the duvet. She’d worn it when she’d talked to me about going away – an all-night conversation in which I’d done nothing but whinge and complain. If she didn’t pull through, that would be the last proper talk we ever had. I pushed the thought from my mind. She’d pull through. She had to.

‘Any sign?’

I turned to find Ameena in the upstairs hallway, knife held ready. ‘Nothing,’ I said, and she lowered the blade to her side. ‘No one’s here.’

‘Great,’ she said, sighing. ‘What now?’

‘We go outside,’ I said. ‘We look for her. We find her. We’ve got to find her.’

Ameena’s hand was on my shoulder. ‘We will. She’ll be OK.’

OK. Like the policewoman was OK.