Dead Bad Things (35 page)

  She hated the bed. It would have been better if her parents had got rid of it after she left home. They should have cleared her room and redecorated, changing it all to erase her personality from its interior. But instead they had left everything the same, like a container for the mementos of her childhood. The same girly wallpaper, dotted with ponies. The same posters on the walls of pop stars she could barely even remember and film actors whose names and roles she'd forgotten. Even the books and magazines she'd read back then remained inside the room, stacked along the shelves Emerson had bolted to the walls.

  It was as if her childhood was still here, waiting for her, and now that she'd returned to the family home she was regressing, going back to a point in her life when she had been most vulnerable.

  She blinked into the darkness, wondering what had woken her. Was Usher walking around, sleepless and worrying? When he'd caught sight of the tattoo on her back something had changed between them. His face had drained of colour and his body had slumped. Then, when he had revealed the matching scars on his belly a strange thing had happened: the bond that had been forming between them became more solid, as if the words decorating both of their bodies were yet another link in a chain that stretched so far back in time that neither of them could see where it began.

  In that moment, when Sarah had touched his scars, she felt closer to him than she had to any other human being in her life. Their skin fused; their lives interlocked, like two lost pieces of a jigsaw that had been found again and slotted into place. But still the picture remained incomplete: there were so many other pieces missing from the whole.

  Sarah didn't know what any of this meant, but it felt… profound. Something had changed at a fundamental level: a transformation had begun deep inside her, perhaps within the hidden chambers of her heart.

  She listened to the house, trying to pick out individual sounds. Timber creaked, the pipes in the walls rattled. The cantankerous boiler breathed like an asthmatic old man. She had grown accustomed to these noises during her stay back in the house – they reminded her of old times, of days and nights she wanted to forget. The heartbeat of the house was the same as it always had been. Nothing had changed, not here: everything had stayed the same.

  The curtains were drawn tightly across her window so it took her a while to start seeing properly in the dark. Gradually her vision grew accustomed to the lack of light, and she was able to pick out the familiar objects in the room: the wardrobe in the corner (her empty uniform hanging like a shed skin from the door), the chest of drawers behind the door, the rocking chair near the window where she had used to toss her blazer after school.

  There was somebody sitting in the rocking chair.

  It was him: Emerson.

  As usual, he was wearing his long black robe and the delicate white hood – the hood that resembled an old woman's doily. His features were swathed in white; cruel contours concealed beneath the square of pure silk. He was rocking slowly in the chair, his hands gripping the varnished wooden arms and his toes pressed against the floor. The motion was disturbing, almost too slow. He was looking in her direction, staring at her beneath the hood.

  "I'm not scared of you," she said. "Not any more." She sat up on the mattress and slid her hand under the pillow, looking for the gun she'd taken from the drawer downstairs.

  The gun wasn't there.

  The figure moved one of his hands and placed it in his lap, picking up the gun that rested there, between his knees. "You should be," he said. "You should be terrified." He waved the gun in the air, making small circles with the barrel. "It isn't even loaded."

  Sarah watched the gun. It was useless anyway, against a ghost. So why had he gone to the trouble of taking it from under the pillow while she slept? Why not just leave it there, if only to toy with her even more than he was right now?

  The figure stood, pushing itself away from the chair. "Did you sleep well?"

  That voice… it didn't sound like Emerson, not how she remembered him. It wasn't deep enough; the timbre was all wrong. "Who are you?"

  The figure drifted closer to the bed, but stopped short of touching the covers. It stood there, dropping the gun onto the floor. The weapon fell with a gentle thud. "I'm your ever-loving Daddy."

  Sarah shook her head. "No… you're not him. Not Emerson."

  Behind the figure, in the rocking chair it had just vacated, something materialised. It was another figure, wearing the same ritualistic attire. This one did not move; it just sat there, its head cocked to one side like an inquisitive dog.

  "Who are you?" Her mouth was dry and her tongue felt swollen, filling her throat like vomit.

  "Who do you think?"

  Realisation hit her like a blow to the solar plexus. For a moment, she couldn't speak, couldn't think. She felt staggered by his words and the implication behind them. The truth was cruel; it was yet another punishment heaped on top of all the rest.

  She took a deep breath, composing herself. "Benson. What are you doing?"

  The figure nodded – Benson nodded. She could imagine him smiling beneath the hood. "I told you I'd been coming to see him."

  The figure on the chair shifted slightly, silently. It held up both hands, palms outwards, and waggled its fingers. It was waving at her.

  "He's been guiding me, telling me what to do. Showing me the path he chose for me. I don't have the same gift as him, but he's helped me along, pointing out the way I should follow."

  Sarah backed up along the bed until her back pressed against the headboard. "What the fuck are you talking about, Benson? Tell me what you mean."

  He rolled his head on his neck, as if he were limbering up for some kind of exercise, warming up the muscles before commencing a tough routine. "He told me which ones to take…
the
kids
. He saw the bad things inside them, just like he always did, and I took them and hid them and carried out the ritual. He pointed the way and I followed, and together we opened their minds to let out the dead bad things."

  Sarah let out a small whining sound, like a stifled scream. She felt trapped, pinned to the bed. Everything was moving fast now, playing out towards the end game, and the best she could hope for was not to be killed by this fucking lunatic.

  "You're ill, Benson. You're not well. Let's talk about this and maybe we can get you some help." It sounded pathetic even to her, like lines from a script that should have been rewritten long before the first act began.

  "I killed the first one over a year ago, while Emerson was still alive." Benson was ignoring her, carrying on with his monologue as if she wasn't even there. "I hadn't perfected the technique – didn't realise I had to burn the holes afterwards to seal the exit and keep other bad things out. So I hid the body in a warehouse near an abandoned car park and waited for my next instructions, but Emerson died and I was left not knowing what I should do. I was lost for a while… didn't know what to do."

  He paused, remembering. The figure behind him nodded.

  "Then, after his funeral, he came to me. Just like the angel had come to him He told me to get close to you. He showed me what to do, where to go, and I did the next one in the dental chair, just for show. It was my own special touch, just to stamp my personality on the act."

  Benson giggled. It was not a pleasant sound, nor was it a wholly sane one.

  Behind him, Emerson's ghost was laughing too, but silently. His shoulders were hitching up and down in undisguised mirth and his body rocked back and forth on the chair.

  "He might have been your father, but I'm his only real child. He gave birth to what I am, what I've done. I'm his one true son." With these words Benson seemed to come back to her, remembering that she was there, cowering on the bed.

  He reached up and took off the hood, exposing his scars. His face glowed in the darkness, as if some internal light had been switched on. "These scars… my ruined face.
He
did it to me, marking me out. I wear them like a badge. That story about my face being cut in the crash, it was all bullshit. Emerson did this to me, scarring me as part of a ritual, an induction, to set me apart from the herd."

  He smiled, and it was an awful sight. There was nothing behind the expression – nothing but deep darkness, endless night: a forever made up of scars.

  "I wear his mark with pride."

  Sarah's gaze kept flickering between Benson and the ghost in the rocking chair. She didn't know which one to be most afraid of. Then she remembered something that Usher had said earlier, about ghosts hardly ever hurting someone with their own dead hands. They used someone else, he'd said: they manipulated the living into carrying out such corporeal deeds.

  That was when Sarah realised that the living were so much more terrifying than the dead.

  Ghosts won't hurt you, she thought, but they can harm you through the vessels of the living. They can kill you indirectly, controlling damaged and willing people like puppets.

  "Don't do this," she said, drawing herself up to her knees. "Don't… just remember what we had, what we've shared. What we could have been if we'd both worked hard enough to make it happen."

   Benson's smile slid away; rotten flesh slipping from a leering skull. "We had nothing," he said, deadpan. "We shared nothing. All I ever wanted was to be in this house, close to him." He turned and motioned towards the rocking chair, but Emerson's phantom was no longer there. The chair was empty, but it continued to rock gently, as if someone had just stood up and walked calmly away from the scene.

  Sarah was edging back along the length of the bed, towards the door, using Benson's momentary distraction to gain some ground. She kept her gaze locked onto him, willing him to look the other way for just a moment longer. But Benson turned around, and his face was like a white sheet of paper in the dark room: vast and blank and deathless.

  "Where the fuck do you think you're going?" He moved along the side of the bed, matching her progress. From the folds of his robe he produced a long-bladed knife. Sarah recognised it; the knife had belonged to Emerson, a tool he'd used whenever he went fishing. Ghosts didn't need weapons; only people needed weapons, along with the will to use them. Emerson had kept the blade downstairs in the cellar. Before he managed to get hold of the scalpels, he had even used it on Sarah, carefully carving the insides of her thighs as he tried his best not to rape and then kill her – fighting his urges to remain true to his angel.

  "Let me go, Benson. If you're still in there, please let me go." It hurt her to beg; it was not in her nature to ask for mercy. She was a strong woman, an independent person, and resented the fact that she had been reduced to crawling on a mattress on her hands and knees.

  "Leave her."

  Sarah turned and looked at the door. It was open and Usher stood in the doorway, his face grim and his eyes as hard and cold as chips of ice.

  "He's crazy," she said, somewhat unnecessarily. "He killed them all… those kids. It was him."

  Usher stepped into the room. Sarah remembered his admission that he was not a fighter, but he looked intent and dangerous. In his hand he hefted a large meat cleaver, which he must have grabbed from the rack in the kitchen. He adjusted his grip on the handle and raised it to waist level. "Don't make me use this," he said. His voice was low. He meant business – or was at least giving a convincing performance.

  "Don't be silly, ghost-man." Benson forgot about her for a moment and turned to face the interloper. "I know all about you – Emerson told me, and the angel told him. You're evil. You're responsible for the dead bad things being in the world. You're the doorway they use to come through from whatever hell they call home." He moved forward, reducing the space between the potential combatants.

  Sarah slipped off the bed. She was behind Benson now; he had moved far enough away from the bed that she could manoeuvre herself into a good position to strike. She realised that Usher was bluffing – of course he was: he had already told her that he'd be useless if things got physical. She shifted her weight and prepared to strike, scanning the area for a weapon.

  "Just get out of here," said Usher. "I'm not who you think I am. I'm not who anyone thinks I am. Whatever is leaking into this place, it isn't because of me. I know that now. I might just be the only thing standing between this world and chaos."

  Sarah grabbed the only thing she could think of, a heavy vase, and pushed herself off the floor. She went into an agile leap and brought the vase around in a smooth arc, resulting in the object smashing into the side of Benson's head. She moved silently; a war cry would have acted as a warning, and people only did that in films. He batted at her arms and shoulders as his body lurched sideways from the blow, but she managed to evade his desperate grasp.

  Benson stumbled further to his left, and Sarah took the opportunity to dodge past him and run towards the door. On her way there she grabbed her baton from its hook on the wall, where it dangled next to her uniform on its hanger on the outside of the wardrobe door. She spun and extended the baton: it snickered in the darkness. The sound was like muted laughter.

  "Bitch!" Benson staggered towards her, his hands like clutching claws as they grabbed and batted at her shoulders.

  Sarah acted quickly. She stepped inside and brought the baton up and into his chin, slamming it with all the force she could muster. Benson made a coughing sound and then began to drop; Sarah stepped outside of his reach and swung the baton against his temple. The sound it made upon impact was sickening: a dry crunch as it hit bone.