28

The day had been long, difficult, tiring, and as he stepped outside and embraced the evening air, Steven knew that it could get a lot worse from here. He hadn’t lost his phone. He hadn’t been at work. What Abi didn’t know was that he’d been sacked months ago. She also didn’t know that his “job” had been part time at a call center, had only lasted for a few weeks, and had ended when he lost patience with a customer and swore at them.

In truth, it had been years since he’d had a stable job, which is why he simply told Abi that he “worked in IT.” Technically, he spent his days browsing the web and playing video games, so at least he hadn’t lied about working with computers all day.

That wasn’t the only thing he’d kept from Abi, but it wasn’t out of malice. Their relationship was still young. He liked her, and he didn’t want to scare her away.

By playing the hero now, he felt that he could somehow make it up to her and impress her. Maybe then he could tell her the truth—the job, the ex-wife, Lilly.

Steven wasn’t the macho type, but he wanted to impress Abi, to make her think he was capable of looking after her. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered whether he should have confronted Robert sooner, whether he should have punched him or, at the very least, insisted he gave him answers when they had argued in the yard.

He couldn’t let another regret slip him by, couldn’t allow Abi to think that he was weak or incapable.

With the imprint of her glossed lips still on his cheek, Steven crossed the back yard, going from the back door to the fence that separated Abi’s house from Robert’s. There were other houses, other yards, all connected, but Abi had disabled the security light so even the most eagle-eyed of voyeurs wouldn’t see him as he stalked across the grass.

As he awkwardly scaled the fence, wishing he was younger and fitter and hoping that Abi wasn’t watching from the patio door, he shot a glance at the second story of Abi’s house. He looked at what he knew was the grandmother’s bedroom, half expecting to see signs of life—a flickering TV, a lamp, the unmistakable blue glow of a phone or laptop. For a moment, he thought he may even see the old lady staring down at him, a suggestive smile on her face as he twisted into and then out of a very suggestive and awkward pose. But he saw nothing. The window was dark, uninviting, empty—the curtains were open, but there wasn’t even a suggestion of light beyond.

He landed on the other side of the fence, the concrete patio absorbing the fall and sending shockwaves through his legs, threatening to blowout an old knee injury he’d received playing rugby.

His ears pinned toward the house ahead of him, searching for any sound in the house—a TV, a computer, a snore. He shuffled forward, taking great pains to ensure his steps wouldn’t be heard. The night was silent, unnervingly so. Abi had decided that the best way to warn him of Robert’s presence was to play music on full volume. It would be brief but loud—enough to dismiss as a mistake and more than enough to get his attention.

She was waiting with her hand on the remote and Metallica on her playlist. But Steven reasoned that if the noise of squelching grass beneath his feet and the shuffling of his pants were anything to go by, a low-volume Leonard Cohen would suffice.

Steven took a deep breath and edged toward the patio door.

—

Abi waited calmly by the office window. All the lights in the house were off, and she had fetched an old pair of binoculars, allowing her to see everything that happened on the street. The high-powered antique was her gran’s. The irreverent granny insisted that her neighbors were dull as dishwater and tried her best to avoid them, but in the comfort of their own homes, when the lights were low, everyone became interesting.

“Everyone has an interesting story, dear, but sometimes you have to discover it for yourself.”

The street was lit by sporadically placed streetlights; four glowing orange—radiant, soft, warming; one glowing white—stark, bright, unforgiving.

The light had been smashed by some of the local kids several weeks ago. The council, in their infinite wisdom, had replaced it with a brighter, whiter, and more energy-efficient bulb. It saved them a few pennies on their electricity bill but lit up street like a hospital corridor, eliciting a deluge of complaints from the locals.

Abi often found herself staring at the solitary white light. Lost in a sea of orange, it shone brighter, stronger, and with more force than the others, but it was out of place, unwanted, alone.

Most of the houses in the street were active, buzzing with lights and life. In the house to the left of the dead woman’s, which stood dark and empty, a young boy played computer games in one of the bedrooms. He stood upright, rigid, controller in hand, screen mere feet from him, as he engaged in the action. Downstairs, the curtains were drawn, dark silhouettes merged on the sofa as a TV screen flickered.

On the other side, a young woman exercised on a stepping machine in the living room, the windows open to cool her down. Two doors down, a man sat on an armchair with a ginger cat slouched on his lap and a smartphone in his hand. Behind him, on the back of the chair, a brown tabby tested its balance and tried to attract attention from both human and feline.

Abi turned her attention down the street, her heart skipping a beat when she saw a figure in black approach. He moved slowly, almost cautiously, his footsteps staggered, his movement methodical. She reached for the knob on the stereo and waited. The figure seemed to stall, as if aware—maybe he knew he was being watched, maybe he knew someone was prowling around his house.

Abi hovered a finger over the play button and then withdrew it. The figure stepped under the halo of a streetlight, and she saw that it was an old man walking his dog. The fluffy mutt was frantically inspecting the grass, its nose pinned to the ground and its tail in the air as it looked for a place to relieve itself, its owner getting more and more frustrated by the second.

The discriminating canine finally settled on a flower bed nestled between big bunches of foliage and slowly lowered its rear. The old man looked away, checked his watch, tapped the dial, and muttered something, possibly telling the dog to hurry up, possibly moaning about something under his breath. Abi watched the dog for a moment, its bulging eyes, its lolling tongue, before sweeping the binoculars over the yard and onto the upstairs window.

A middle-aged man stood in the window, the curtains open, the light on, his stature prominent and ominous. His arms were folded across his chest, and he wore a menacing glare as his attention focused on the little dog and its mumbling owner. He waited until the dog finished and the man dragged him away before he exploded into life—banging on the glass, gesturing outside, no doubt focusing his angst on his neighbor and on the canine that had just befouled his flowerbed.

Abi swept the binoculars to the dog owner, who held up his free hand in apology and reluctantly slugged back to the offending excrement, retrieving a small plastic bag from his pocket.

The drama of suburban life.

Abi didn’t know the dog walker, and as much as she loved dogs and made a point of focusing on them more than their human owners, she had never seen the dog either. She didn’t know the man in the window, who watched with something bordering sadistic glee as his neighbor grabbed a handful of excrement, and she had yet to meet his wife, who came up behind him to see what all the fuss was about.

Abi had also never met the man with the cats or the woman on the exercise machine. She had bumped into the boy playing video games after he nearly ran into her one day when riding his bike, but her knowledge of her neighbors was negligible and her interactions scarce. She put it down to being a hermit, to working from home, having very little social life to speak of and spending her days in a self-imposed prison.

Abi sighed deeply, lowered the binoculars, and checked her watch. Steven had been outside for nearly five minutes, she realized. It would surely be a matter of time before he found something, and they could begin piecing this crazy story together.

—

Steven tried the patio door first, but it was locked. Abi had told him that the doors were poorly fitted and the locks often jammed open, but it was definitely locked. There were no lights inside the house, but the curtains at the front were partially open and they allowed some of the lights from the street to filter inside.

Cupping his hands against the glass, he peered inside, blocking out what little light shone from behind him. He could see the dining room clear as day and the living room beyond that. The layout was almost the same as Abi’s house, only it looked a little bigger because it was empty. Where she had a bookcase stacked with end-to-end books, Robert had an old wooden chair; where she had a dining room table, there were just cardboard boxes. Robert had a sofa, an armchair, a small coffee table, and a TV, but that was it.

Steven moved to the back window, the kitchen window. The entire back wall of the kitchen was connected to the garage, separated from the living room by a door, which was firmly shut. There was minimal light inside, a slither of moonlight. He thought he saw someone sitting on a chair near the window and the silhouette startled him, causing him to pull away from the glass and to contemplate a quick retreat, but it could have just as easily been a doll, a coat, or a piece of furniture.

He pulled his face away from the glass, squeezed his eyes shut and breathed deeply, waiting for his rapidly beating heart to slow. When he opened them again, he noticed that the middle panel of the window was cracked, the first layer of the triple-glazed glass had been all but shattered in the center, with thinner cracks spiraling outward. A brick lay at the foot of the window, and Steven assumed it was the offending object, no doubt thrown by mischievous kids. He stepped over it and moved to the back door, hoping the glass panel in the upper part of the door would be more illuminating than the kitchen window, but before he pressed his face against the glass, he decided to test his luck.

He reached for the door handle and pushed.

—

Abi was growing increasingly agitated, worried—her right foot tapped a techno beat on the floor, her fingers drummed staccato rhythms on the table.

Too much coffee. Not good for my nerves.

The binoculars had been a good idea, in part. They allowed her to see down the street, to catch sight of whoever was approaching long before they became a threat, but they also gave her an excuse to spy on her neighbors, to watch the people she knew little about, to scan the faces she had seen only in passing or not at all.

The little boy playing the video games had been told off by a woman Abi initially assumed was his older sister, but then realized must have been his mother. Her mouth flapped aggressively as she thrust her finger at him and then at the screen. Abi couldn’t read lips and she couldn’t hear a word that was said, but the conversation played out in her head.

“I told you, no computer games on a school night!”

“But mum, it’s just one—”

“But nothing, young man, no means no.”

“Can I please just finish this one?”

“What did I just say?”

“I’ll only be a few minutes.”

The conversation culminated with her turning off the computer and him getting upset. Abi couldn’t see the offending act, but she could see the boy, and by the horror on his face, the way he pointed, screamed, and then jumped up and down like a child possessed, she knew that his mother had taken it upon herself to end his night of gaming.

Abi found it all very amusing, and the woman had the same reaction. After the child stormed away, no doubt running to his bedroom as he screamed the house down, his mother grinned like a Cheshire cat as she slowly closed the curtains.

Abi found herself studying the woman’s features at that point, noting how young she looked, how innocent she seemed. She was younger than Abi, yet she had a child old enough to play computer games, fight back, and storm off to bed—already she had more experience with children and families than Abi ever would have.

That depressed her a little, but her attention was quickly diverted when she saw movement down the end of the street and focused her binoculars on the source once more. This time the silhouette moved quickly, determination in their step, but when they stepped into the light, she saw that it was a teenage girl talking on her smartphone, her giggles growing more audible the closer she got. She wore a thick, black padded jacket and had equally thick dark hair, but she also wore a short skirt, her pale legs like ghost limbs hovering in the darkness every time she moved away from the glow of the streetlights.

Abi checked her watch for what must have been the tenth time in the last couple of minutes.

Where are you, Steven?

—

The back door was unlocked and offered little resistance as Steven pushed it open. He had expected, hoped even, that it would be locked. That way he wouldn’t have to face whatever was inside, he wouldn’t have to ask himself why the door was unlocked and face the consequences of what that meant. Because who, in their right mind, would leave a door unlocked if they knew there was a murderer on the loose, who would allow such a lapse in home security after discovering that someone had been brutally murdered a few feet from their front door?

He had seen enough horror films to know the answer: In a world of chaos, the only one truly at peace is the one responsible.

The door creaked open and immediately Steven was met with a strong stench. It was something he hadn’t smelled before, something unusual, but there was a touch of familiarity to it. It was metallic, inhuman, but it reminded him of childhood nosebleeds, of burst lips. His attention immediately focused on the floor, where a slick black patch lay in wait.

“Blood?” Steven mouthed slowly. He reached for the light switch, slapping madly at the wall until he found it, pressed it, and felt his stomach climb into his throat.

The smell hit him more than ever and he knew exactly what it was. There was a coppery stench of blood, that much was unmistakable, but it was overpowered by the stench of excrement, of decay, death. The linoleum floor was slick with crimson—a large human-sized smear ran through the center, parting the red waves all the way to a wooden chair that had been tucked under a small table.

Robert was propped up on the chair, his face a picture of carnage, every inch of flesh coated in crimson, a large knife skewed through his head. He looked like a beaten, bloodied, human kebab, and what scared Steven most of all, what terrified him more than the pool of blood mere inches from his feet, or the grotesque way that his mouth hung partially open, was his eyes—big, white, wide open, and staring right at him.

Steven stood and stared for several seconds, unable to turn away, unsure of what to do. Many thoughts had entered his mind since he had left Abi’s house. He thought he might be attacked, his assailant lying in wait and preparing for an opportunity just like this; he thought he might be trapped inside the house as the homeowner returned; he even considered the possibility that he would stumble onto a gang of occultists and find himself the target of their morbid curiosities. But for all the thoughts that entered his head, some plausible, many improbable, he never thought he would encounter Robert dead in his own house.

With his feet glued to the floor, his entire body shaking, Steven retrieved Abi’s phone. He pressed the Home button and waited, but the phone didn’t unlock.

“Shit,” Steven hissed. He tried again, at which point the device asked him if he wanted to use his PIN instead. Remembering the number Abi had given him, he gladly accepted and then tried to type the code she had given him, but his hands were shaking violently, and he struggled to hit the correct numbers. He tried again and failed again.

The phone warned him that he had one more try before it locked, one more try before he lost his chance.

“Come on.” A deep breath, eyes closed—he tried again. His trembling digits pressed the wrong number several more times, but he quickly deleted the digit and corrected himself. Just as he pressed the final digit, the door creaked on its hinges, rocked by a breeze, and he jumped, pressing the wrong number again and locking the phone.

“Fuck!”

He locked eyes with Robert once more—those unblinking, unmoving, lifeless eyes. The blood on the floor still looked slick, like a sheet of red ice, but the blood on Robert’s face was thick, dark. A congealed blob ran from his mouth and coated his beard, hanging from his chin like a cherry popsicle.

He lowered the phone and slipped it back in his pocket, but three words flashed into his head, words he had read at the top of the locked phone but hadn’t immediately registered. “Emergency Calls Only.”

In his haste, he yanked the phone out of his pocket, and it slipped out of his sweaty grasp. He juggled with it, bouncing it from one hand to the next, struggling to grip it, his eyes bulging as they witnessed this brief but heart-dropping spectacle. It collided with his right palm and flew forward, out of his reach, into the brightly lit kitchen.

The phone landed in the pile of blood, splashing some of the thick, viscous liquid before resting among it, the blood now gradually enveloping it like some insidious, sentient being. The screen was still glowing as the blood slowly covered it, turning the bright white glow to a dull red.

The pool of blood claimed the phone, covering the screen, glowing red like a lava lamp before flicking off entirely, either succumbing to liquid damage or entering standby. He shook his head in disbelief and then turned to Robert. The human kebab was still staring at him, his dead eyes fixed firmly, but Steven could have sworn he was now smiling, mocking.