Alex Barclay - Blood Runs Cold

In the lights of the police cruisers, her face was a strobing image of pain and fear. But she was still, to the child in her arms, a haven. She ran as fast as her violated body would allow, pressing his head to her cheek, his hair soaking up their sweat, blood, spit, tears. A terrible, ruined stench rose from them in the damp heat.

She staggered on, flinching at the stones and branches underfoot, her shoes long lost, too beautiful for the night. The trees swayed toward them and away, and when they gave enough shelter, she stopped. She prised the tiny hands from around her neck, breaking the dead-man’s grip of a seven-year-old boy. She tried to smile as she lowered him to the ground. Black pinpricks of gravel shone from her lips.

‘Do not make a sound,’ she said. ‘Not a sound.’ Her voice was edged in nicotine.

The boy quickly clamped his arms around her legs. She shoved him sharply backwards, away from her wounds. He fell hard. She watched without feeling. He got up and moved toward her again, tears streaming down his face.

‘No,’ she hissed, shaking her head. ‘No.’

She crouched down. ‘You have to hide, OK?’ She pointed to the scrub close by. ‘Go. I’ll be right here.’ She squeezed his hand as she released it.

He did as she said. She moved a few steps forward into a clearing, cracking the forest floor. Her face was in darkness. But in the faint glow of a flashlight, relief swept over her features; a picture, flashing like a warning.

The man walked from the trees. He looked at his wife — bloodied and soiled, her hand gripping her ripped-open blouse in what dignity she could find. She slumped against him, the sounds she made raw and disturbing.

The little boy watched. As I was walking up the stair I met a man who wasn’t there He wasn’t there again today I wish, I wish he’d stay away

‘ Mira , Domenica,’ said the man. Look.

Domenica turned to where she had run from. Beyond the trees, a fire raged and smoke filled the sky. She was transfixed.

‘Hellfire,’ she said.

But her eyes shone with something more than flames.

Rifle, Colorado

Jean Transom woke to the glow of her desk lamp and the feeling that someone had laid a trail of explosives under her world while she slept. Two work files lay in front of her — brown manila folders, the pages inside clean, neat and annotated. The top file held no photographs, but was open on a drawing — a basic floor plan, the benign geometry of rectangles and circles and squares coming together on a page to represent a space that had been so malignant. Jean inhaled deeply, but what followed was a broken breath. She pressed her hands on the desk and stood up.

She took a shower, rubbing a bar of soap briskly over her body under the hot jets. She dressed in a white shirt, tan tapered pants and soft leather shoes.

‘Come here, baby,’ she said, smiling as she walked into the kitchen. She hunkered down and reached out a hand. ‘Come here, McGraw, you sweet little boy.’

The shiny black cat stared her down.

‘That’s why it’s called a catwalk, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘You know how to move, don’t you? And you know how to look at me like you are fabulous and I am not. But I can be fabulous, you’d be surprised to hear. Yes I can.’ She laughed as he turned his back, raised his tail, and made his way slowly to his bed in the corner.

‘Lazy, baby,’ said Jean. ‘I have a lazy man living in my house. And if you’re not going to talk to me …’ She reached over and turned on her old black stereo. For a few seconds, Jean Transom sang along to the music, gently and off-key.

She ate her breakfast — oatmeal, honey and fruit. She filled the dishwasher, wiped down the counters and folded the tea towel by the sink.

As she walked out of the kitchen, carrying a cup of decaf back to her office, pain and sorrow swelled again inside her. Everyone is born with places to hide secrets; mind, heart and body. A family can spread the burden along the branches of its trees; some shatter in the storm, others survive the most relentless assaults.

She sat down at her desk and stared at the diagram — years old, preserved in plastic, drawn in blues and greens by a child’s determined hand. It was a diagram that Jean Transom could trust, a child she knew had screamed in the night with the visions. She put it in her work file and went into the hallway.

Her hand shook as she picked up her purse and pulled out her FBI creds. She snapped them on to the right inside breast pocket of her jacket and walked out the door.

Golden, Colorado

Ren Bryce woke to white porcelain and the feeling that someone had laid her free weights on her head while she slept. She reached a hand up to take them away, but her knuckles hit the underside of the toilet bowl. She opened her eyes wider and saw splashes of what had surged from her stomach at four a.m. Red wine. She rolled on to her back. Her blue dress, beautiful and complimented twelve hours earlier, was open to the waist, limp and stained. She turned her head slowly and saw her stockings in the corner by the toilet brush. She closed her eyes again.

She dragged herself slowly upright and was soon hanging over the bowl, heaving nothing, but hit with the smell of her previous efforts. She retched until silver stars burst before her eyes. She hauled herself standing and turned on the shower, spending ten minutes washing her hair and body with six different products.

From her bedroom, her iPod alarm exploded full volume with Dropkick Murphys. Let’s finish these drinks and be gone for the night Cos I’m more than a handful you’ll see So kiss me, I’m shitfaced …

Ren jumped from the shower and ran naked to turn down the volume. She dried herself with a towel from the floor, then threw on pink lace boy shorts, a matching bra, a black fitted shirt, black bootleg pants and black heels. She walked past her dressing table, a wave of nausea sweeping over her at the thought of makeup. But she gave in. Her day was already going to be bad.

She grabbed a clip with one hand, twisted her wet hair with the other and pinned it up. She sat down at the mirror and moisturized in slow motion. Her face was a blank canvas; dark skin, pale green eyes, high cheekbones. Somewhere in her past, there was Iroquois blood. She dragged her makeup toward her and applied a calm surface to the choppy waters.

Vincent was downstairs on the sofa reading the paper.

‘Hi,’ said Ren.

‘Appropriate song choice.’ His voice was flat.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Sorry about the volume.’

‘The volume?’ said Vincent, looking up.

Ren stared at him from across the room.

‘Is that it?’ he said.

‘Is what it?’ said Ren.

‘Have you nothing to say for yourself?’

Ren kept walking into the kitchen. She poured a mug of black coffee.

Vincent came in behind her. ‘Can you explain your behavior at least?’

‘OK,’ said Ren, turning around, ‘you’ve just used three sentences — in a row — that my mom used to say to me when I was, like, seventeen.’

‘Stop with the whole mom thing.’

‘Yeah, well, it’s true. That’s what you sound like. I’m sick of listening to you treat me — ’

‘No, no, no. I’m sick. Of all of this.’

Ren opened her mouth.

‘Listen to yourself,’ said Vincent. ‘You are thirty-six years old and you sound like a child.’

‘Fuck you,’ said Ren.

Vincent held up his finger. ‘I can’t do this any more,’ he said. ‘You were way out of line last night.’

Ren put her hands to her ears. ‘Shut up. I don’t want to know.’