Darkmans

‘She stole? What did she steal?’

‘Huh?’

Kane’s attention was momentarily diverted by a sudden commotion outside in the car park.

‘I said what did she steal?’

Kane struck his lighter again –

Nothing

‘You really want to know?’ he murmured.

‘I just asked, didn’t I?’

‘Yes. Yes you did…’ He sighed. ‘She stole tranquillisers, mainly; Benzodiazepines…’

Kane struck his lighter for a final time and on this occasion a flame actually emerged and it was a full 5 inches high (he always set his lighters at maximum flare, even if his fringe paid the ultimate price for his profligacy).

‘…Some Xanax. Some Valium. Some…’

He paused, abruptly, mid-enumeration –

‘Holy shit!’

The flame cut out.

A man.

There was a man.

There was a man at the window, gazing in at them. And he was perched on a horse; an old, piebald mare (the horse wore no saddle, no reins, but he sat astride her – holding on to her mane – with absolute confidence). He was a strange man; had a long, lean, pale-looking face underpinned by a considerable jaw, grey with stubble; a mean mouth, sharp, dark eyes, thick, brown brows but no other hair to speak of. His head was cleanly shaven. He was handsome – vital, even – but with a distinctly delinquent air. He was wearing something strangely unfeasible in a bright yellow (a colour of such phenomenal intensity it’d cheerfully take the shine off a prize canary).

The window was horse-high, only; its torso banged against the glass, steaming it over – so the man leaned down low to peek in, as if peering into the tank of an aquarium (or a display cabinet in a museum). Kane couldn’t tell – at first – what exactly it was that he was looking for, but he seemed absolutely enthralled by what he saw (seemed to take delight in things – like a child – quite readily). He was smiling (although not in an entirely child-like way), and when his eyes alighted upon Kane, the smile expanded, exponentially (small, neat, yellowed teeth, a touch of tongue). He reached out a hand and beckoned towards him –

Come

Kane dropped his lighter.

As the lighter hit the table-top Beede turned himself and followed the line of Kane’s gaze. His own eyes widened.

The horseman kicked at the mare’s flanks and pulled away. There was a thud of hooves on soil (God only knows what havoc he’d wreaked on the spring flower display in the bed below the window) and then a subsequent musket-clatter on the tarmac.

Kane shoved back his chair and stood up. ‘Is the fucking carnival in town or what?’ he asked (noticing the quick pump of his heart, the sharp flow of his breath). He’d barely finished speaking (was about half-way to the window to try and see more) when a woman walked into the room. She was holding on to the hand of a small boy. She appeared to be searching for someone.

This time it was Beede’s turn to spring to his feet. The book on his lap fell to the floor. Kane spun around to the sound of its falling. ‘Elen!‘ Beede exclaimed, his face flushing slightly.

The woman did not acknowledge him at first. She merely paused, glanced from Beede to Kane, then back again, her expression barely altering (it remained bright and calm and untroubled. Almost serene). Kane saw that she had a large birthmark – a brown mole – in the curve of her nose, just to the right of her left eye, but it disappeared from view as a sheet of long, dark hair slipped out from behind her ear.

‘Did Isidore bring you here?’ Beede asked, trying (and almost succeeding) to sound less emotionally involved than before. She looked a little surprised as she pushed back her hair. ‘Of course not,’ her lips pursed together in a brief pucker of concern, ‘he’s at work today.’

She had a soft voice. The accent wasn’t Ashford but it was too vague for Kane to place it. As she spoke she released the boy’s hand. The boy walked straight past Kane and over to the window, but instead of looking through it (he was a little short for this, anyhow), he turned, shoved his back against the wall, and pulled the curtain across the top half of his body (thereby casually obscuring what remained of Kane’s view). Kane scowled (only the bottom half of the boy’s torso was now visible), glancing from the curtain and back to Beede again. ‘Did you see that creature out there?’ he asked, his head still full of what’d happened before.

‘This is my son, Kane,’ Beede murmured to the woman, in a light, almost excessively straightforward way.

The woman nodded at Kane. She smiled slightly. She was very lean. Her clothes were long and hippyish, but dark and plain and clean.

‘Elen is my chiropodist,’ Beede explained.

‘Hi,’ Kane muttered, glancing distractedly towards the window again, focussing in on the boy, who – quiet as he remained – was rather difficult to ignore.

‘Fleet,’ the woman said – her voice mild but authoritative – ‘please come away from there.’

‘I owed Elen some money,’ Beede continued (almost to thin air). He put his hand to his pocket, then thought better of it and leaned down to pick up his bag from the floor.

Kane noticed how he pronounced her name – not Ellen, but E-len – as if the ‘l’ had quite bewitched his tongue.

The boy ducked out from under the curtain (leaving it drawn), walked back over to his mother and stood at her side. He was small and wild-looking (four years old? five?); an imp; round-faced and wide-lipped, with pale skin, brown freckles and black hair. He stared at Kane, unblinking. Then he smiled. He had no front teeth.

‘We were waiting in the bar area,’ the woman said, glancing for a moment towards the window herself (as if sensing Kane’s preoccupation with it). ‘Fleet found a counter on the floor and put it into one of the machines. He won some money.’

The boy jiggled his hands around in his pockets and gurgled, delightedly.

‘The barman said he was underage…’

‘He is,’ Beede interrupted.

Kane rolled his eyes, then displaced his irritation by taking out his phone and checking his texts again. The woman observed Kane’s irritation, but showed no reaction to it.

‘He gave me all of these,’ Fleet interjected, pulling several packets of complimentary matches from his pockets, laughing and rotating on the spot, his face turned up to the ceiling, the matches clutched tightly to his chest. His mother put out her hand to steady him. ‘He builds things with them,’ she explained.

Outside the horse was still vaguely audible as it moved around in the car park. While Beede continued to search through his bag, Kane strolled over to the window, pulled the curtain back and peered out. The horse was visible, but way off to his left. It had come to a halt in the children’s play area, where it stood, breathing heavily and defecating. The man was now struggling to climb off its back. But it was an entirely different man.

Kane blinked.

Entirely different. Tall. Nordic. Smartly dressed in some kind of uniform –

Imposter

He pushed his palms up against the glass and looked around for the canary-coated stranger, but nobody else was visible out there.

‘How strange,’ he said, turning just in time to see Beede’s hand withdrawing from the woman’s hand (he had passed her an envelope. She placed it into her bag, her eyes meeting Kane’s, calmly).

‘What is?’ Beede asked.

‘The man who peered in through the window a moment ago. The man on the horse. He’s changed.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘He had a shaved head and a thin face. He was dressed in yellow.’

The boy suddenly stopped revolving. He grabbed on to his mother’s skirts. ‘Oh dear,’ he whispered, then pushed his face deep into the fabric and kept it hidden there.

The child was definitely beginning to work on Kane’s nerves.

Beede was staring at Kane, but his expression was unreadable (was it disbelief? Was it irritation? Anger? What was it?) The woman merely stared at the ground, frowning, as if carefully considering something.

‘Did you see him?’ Kane asked again.

‘Uh…no. No. And I’m late – work. I’d better head off.’ Beede spoke abruptly. He touched the woman’s sleeve (she smiled), ruffled the boy’s hair (the boy released his mother’s skirt and gazed up at him), slung his bag over his shoulder, grabbed his helmet, his goggles, and rapidly strode off.

Kane watched him go, blankly. Then he blinked (something seemed to strike him) and he focussed –

What?!

Beede disappeared from view.

‘Is anything the matter?’ the woman asked, observing Kane’s sudden air of confusion.

He turned to look at her. ‘No.’ He put his hand to his head.

‘Yeah.’ He removed his hand. ‘No…It’s just that…’ he paused, ‘Beede…There’s something…something odd.’

She nodded, as if she understood what he meant.

‘What is it?’ he asked.

She smiled (that smile again) but didn’t answer.

‘Do you know?’

He struggled to mask his irritation. She folded her arms across her chest and nodded again, now almost teasing him.

‘Then what is it?’

‘His walk,’ she said, plainly.

Kane drew a sharp breath. ‘His limp,’ he exclaimed (as if this information had come to him entirely without prompting). ‘He’s lost his limp.’

‘Yes.’

‘But how…? When?’

‘A while ago now.’

‘Really?’

She nodded. Kane scratched his jaw –

Two days’ growth

He felt engulfed by a sudden wave of feeblemindedness –

Too tired

Too stoned

Too fucked…

He looked at her, hard, as if she might be the answer to his problem –

Chiropodist

‘Did you get rid of it?’ he asked.

She smiled, her eyes shining.

Kane rubbed at his own eyes. He felt a little stupid. He steadied himself.

‘Beede’s had that verruca since I was a kid,’ he said slowly. ‘It was pretty bad.’

‘I believe it was very painful,’ she said, still smiling (as if the memory of Beede’s pain was somehow delightful to her).

He coldly observed the smile –

Is she mocking him?

Is she mocking me?

– then he gradually collected his thoughts together. ‘Yes,’ he said stiffly, ‘I have one in almost exactly the same place, but it’s never really…’

His words petered out.

She shrugged. ‘People often inherit them. It’s fairly common. Verrucas can be neurotic…’

‘Neurotic?’

Kane’s voice sounded louder than he’d intended.

‘Yes,’ she was smiling again, ‘when a patient fails to get rid of something by means of conventional medicine we tend to categorise it as a psychological problem rather than as a physical one.’

Kane struggled to digest the implications of this information. His brain seized, initially, then it belched –

‘But a verruca’s just some type of…of wart,’ he stuttered. ‘You catch them in changing rooms…’

‘Yes. But like any ailment it can be sustained by a kind of…’ she paused, thoughtfully ‘…inner turmoil.’

The boy was now sitting on the floor and inspecting his matches. He shook each box, in turn, and listened intently to the sounds it made. ‘I can tell how many’s in there,’ he informed nobody in particular, ‘just from the rattlings.’

‘We’ve met before.’ Kane spoke, after a short silence.

‘Yes,’ she said.

(He already heartily disliked how she just agreed to things, in that blank – that untroubled – way. The easy acquiescence. The cool compliance. He connected it to some kind of background in nursing. He loathed nurses. He found their bedside manner – that distinctively assertive servility – false and asphyxiating.)

‘You treated my mother,’ he said, feeling his chest tighten. She sat down on Beede’s chair, facing him. ‘I think I did. Years ago.’

‘That’s right. You came to the house. I remember now.’

They were both quiet for a moment.

‘You’d just returned from Germany,’ Kane continued, plainly rather astonished (and then equally irritated) by the extent of his own recall.

‘Yes I had. I went there for a year, almost straight after I’d graduated.’

‘I remember.’

He sniffed, trying to make it sound like nothing.

‘You have an impressive memory,’ she said, then put a polite hand up to her mouth, as if to suppress a yawn. This almost-yawn infuriated him. He didn’t know why.

How old was she, anyway? Thirty-one? Thirty-three?

‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s just your mole. Your birthmark. It’s extremely memorable.’

She didn’t miss a beat.

‘Of course,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry,’ he struggled to repress a childish smile, ‘that must’ve sounded rude.’

‘No…’ she shook her head, her voice still soft as ever, ‘it didn’t sound rude.’

Didn’t sound rude.

Kane stared at her. She stared back at him. He took out his phone and inspected his messages.

‘A psychiatrist,’ she observed mildly, ‘might call what you do with that phone “masking behaviour”.’

He glanced up, astonished –

The cheek of it

– then quickly checked himself. ‘I guess they might,’ he said, returning casually to his messages and sending a quick response to one of them, ‘but then you’re just a foot doctor.’

She chuckled. She didn’t seem at all offended. ‘You have eyes just like your father’s,’ she murmured, gracefully adjusting the long hem of her skirt (as if hers was a life without technology, without chatter. A life entirely about thinking and pausing and feeling. A quiet life). Kane’s jaw stiffened. ‘I don’t think so,’ he murmured thickly, ‘they’re a completely different colour.’

She shrugged and then sighed, like he was just a boy. She glanced down, briefly, at her son (as if, Kane felt, to make the connection 100 per cent sure), then said blandly, ‘It was a difficult time for you.’

‘Pardon?’

He put his phone away. The tone of his voice told her not to persist, but she ignored the warning.

‘Difficult. With your mother. I remember thinking how incredibly brave you were. Heroic, almost.’

His cheeks reddened. ‘Not at all.’

‘Sometimes, after I’d seen her, I’d just sit in my car and shake. Just shake. I didn’t know how you coped with it. I still don’t. You were so young.’

She smiled softly at the memory, and as she smiled, he suddenly remembered. He remembered standing at the window and seeing her in her car, shaking: her arms thrown over the steering wheel, her head thrown on to her arms –

Oh God

His gut twisted.

He turned and gazed out into the car park. He was unbelievably angry. He felt found-out – unearthed – raw. But worst of all, he felt charmless. Charm was an essential part of his armoury. It was his defensive shield, and she had somehow connived to worm her way under it –

Damn her

He drew a deep breath.

Outside he could suddenly see Beede –

Huh…?

– walking through the play area towards the blond imposter and the horse. The imposter had now dismounted. He was touching his head. He seemed confused. Beede offered his hand to the horse. The horse sniffed his hand. It appeared very receptive to Beede’s advances.

‘I wonder what happened to the other man,’ Kane mused, then shuddered. Everything was feeling strange to him. Inverted. And he didn’t like it.

‘Maybe there were two horses,’ the boy said. He was now standing next to the table and fingering Kane’s lighter. He looked up at Kane and held it out towards him. ‘Red,’ he smiled, ‘that’s your colour.’ The lighter was red.

He showed his mother. ‘See?’

She said nothing.

‘See?’ he repeated. ‘He comes from fire.’

‘Don’t be silly.’ His mother took the lighter off him and held it out to Kane herself.

Kane walked over and took it from her. She had beautiful hands. He remembered her hands from before.

‘I lived in the American desert,’ he said to the boy, ‘when I was younger. It was very hot. I once almost died in the heat out there. Look…’

He pushed back his sleeve and showed the boy a burn on his arm. The boy seemed only mildly interested.

Kane was about to pull his sleeve down again when the woman (Elen, was it?) put out her hand and took a firm hold of his wrist. She pulled his arm towards her. She stared at the scar. Her face was so close to it he could feel her breath on his skin. Then she let go (just as suddenly) and focussed in on the boy once more.

‘America,’ Kane said, taking full possession of his arm again, drawing it into his chest, shoving the sleeve down, feeling like an angry child who’d just had his school uniform damaged in a minor playground fracas. As he spoke he noticed Beede’s book on the floor. He bent down and picked it up. He shoved it into his jacket pocket.

‘In a magic trick,’ the boy repeated, plaintively, ‘they would’ve had two horses.’

‘How old are you?’ Kane asked, glancing over towards the serving counter and noticing Anthony Shilling standing there.

‘Five.’

‘Then you’re just old enough to keep it…’ he said, showing Fleet his empty hand, forming a fist, tapping his knuckles and then opening the hand up again. The red lighter had magically reappeared in the centre of his palm. The boy gasped. Kane placed it down, carefully, on to the lacquered table, nodded a curt farewell to the chiropodist, and left it there.

TWO

‘I’m Beede; Daniel Beede. I’m your friend. Do you remember me, Dory?’

Beede peered up, intently, into the tall, blond man’s face, struggling – at first – to establish any kind of a connection with him. He spoke softly (like you’d speak to a child) and he used his name carefully, as if anticipating that it might provoke some kind of violent reaction. But it didn’t.

‘Of course.’

The tall, blond man blinked and then nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, of course I remember…’ He talked quietly and haltingly with a strong German accent. ‘It’s just that…uh…’

His eyes anxiously scanned the surrounding area (the road, the horse, the tarmac, the vehicles in the car park). ‘It’s just that I suddenly have the strangest…’

He winced, shook his head, then gazed down, briefly, at his own two hands, as if he didn’t quite recognise them. ‘…uh…fu…fu…fühlen?’

He glanced up, quizzically.

‘Feeling,’ Beede translated.

The German stared at him, blankly.

‘Feeling,’ Beede repeated.

The German frowned. ‘No…not…it’s this…this…’ he patted his own chest, meaningfully, ‘fuh-ling. Feee…Yes. Yes. This feeling. This horrible, almost…’ he shuddered, ‘almost overwhelming feeling. Like a kind of…’ He swallowed. ‘A dread. A deep dread.’

Beede nodded.

‘…a terrible dread.’ He moved his hands to his throat, ‘Suffocare. Suffocating. A smothering feeling. A terrible feeling…’

‘You’re tired,’ Beede murmured gently, ‘and possibly a little confused, but it’ll soon pass, trust me.’

‘I do,’ the German nodded, ‘I do traust you.’ He paused. ‘Trost you…’

He blinked. ‘Troost.’

‘Trust,’ Beede repeated.

‘Of course…’ the German continued. ‘It’s just…’

His darting eyes settled, momentarily, on the pony. ‘I have an awful suspicion that this feeling – this…this…uh…’

‘Fear,’ Beede filled in, dryly.

‘Yes…yes…fff…’

The German attempted to wrangle the familiar syllable on his tongue – ‘Ffffah…’ – but the word simply would not come. After his third unsuccessful attempt (pulling back his lips, like a frightened chimpanzee, his nostrils flaring, his eyes bulging) he scowled, closed his mouth again, paused for a second, took stock, then suddenly, and without warning, threw back his head and roared, ‘GE-FHAAAAR!’ at full volume.

The horse skipped nervously from foot to foot.

‘Urgh…’

The German grimaced, wiped his chin with his cuff, then closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. On the exhale he repeated the word – ‘Gefhaar’ – but much more softly this time. He smiled to himself and drew another breath. ‘Fhaar,’ he sighed, then (with increasing rapidity), ‘Fhaar-fhar-fhear-fear-fear…Yes!’

His eyes flew open, then he scowled. ‘But what am I saying here?’

‘This fear,’ Beede primed him.

‘Yes. Of course. Fear. This fear’

The German rapidly clicked back into gear again. ‘I have a feeling – a…a suspicion, you might say – that this dread, this…this…this fhar may be linked in some way…connected in some way…’ he jinked his head towards the pony, conspiratorially ‘…to it. To that. To…’ he struggled to find the correct noun, ‘to khor-khor-khorsam…’

He shook his head, scowling. ‘Khorsam. Horsam. Hors. Horse. Horsey. Horse. Horses.’

He glanced over at Beede, breathlessly, for confirmation. Beede nodded, encouragingly.

‘But you see I’m not…I can’t be entirely…uh…certus,’ he scowled, then winced, then forged doggedly onward, ‘certanus…’ He paused. ‘Cer-tan. I can’t be certain, because it’s still just an…an inkling…’ he shuddered ‘…a slight shadow in the back of my mind. A hunch. Nothing more.’

While he spoke he distractedly adjusted the wedding band on his finger (twisted it, as if of old habit), then gradually grew aware of what he was doing and glanced down. ‘What’s this?’

His eyes widened. ‘A ring? A gold ring? On my third finger?’

He glared at Beede, almost accusingly. ‘Can that be right?’

Beede nodded. He seemed calm and unflustered; as if thoroughly accustomed to this kind of scenario.

‘Mein Gott!’ The German’s handsome face grew stiff with incredulity.

‘You’re telling me I’m…I’m…’

‘Married?’ Beede offered. ‘Yes. Yes, you are. Very happily.’

‘Seriously?’

‘Just wait a while,’ Beede patted his arm, ‘and everything will become clear. I promise.’

‘You’re right. You’re right…’ the German smiled at him, gratefully, ‘I know that…’

But he didn’t seem entirely convinced by it.

‘So do you have any thoughts on where the horse may’ve came from?’ Beede enquired, gently stroking the mare’s flanks. She was exhausted. Her tongue was protruding slightly. There were flecks of foam on her neck and her ribcage. He was concerned that someone inside the restaurant might see them (a member of staff – the manager). They were in a children’s play area, after all. The horse was plainly stolen. Did this qualify as trespass?

The German closed his eyes for a moment (as if struggling to remember), and then the tension suddenly lifted from his face and he nodded. ‘I see a field in the middle of two roads, curving…’ he murmured softly, his speech much less harsh, less halting than before, ‘and beyond…beyond I see Romney. I see the marshes. ‘

He opened his eyes again. ‘I was checking over a couple of vacant properties earlier,’ he explained amiably, ‘in South Willesborough…’

Then he started –

‘Eh?!’

– and spun around, as though someone had just whispered something detestable into his ear.