D. Mitchell - The King of Terrors

‘Excuse me,’ he said, his accent either American or Canadian, Gareth couldn’t determine which. ‘I couldn’t help but overhear. You were asking about a young woman, the one who occupied that bed?’

‘Do you know where she is?’ Gareth asked hopefully.

‘I was hoping you’d be able to tell me, Mr…?’

Gareth ignored the name fishing. ‘How do you know her?’

‘A close friend,’ he said. ‘I’m trying to contact her. I got wind she was here, but like you it appears I arrived just a little too late.’

‘Yes, it appears so,’ he said. There was something about the man he took an instant dislike to. Something that made him feel decidedly uncomfortable. ‘Look, sorry, but I have to leave.’

‘And how is it she knows you? She never mentioned you.’

‘I sort of bumped into her, as you do,’ Gareth said. He tried to sidestep him but he mirrored his move and blocked the exit. ‘I really do have to leave,’ he insisted.

‘And I really do have to find her. It’s important. Perhaps I can buy you a drink?’ he offered, his face trying hard to hold onto a smile that revealed a nice set of teeth which must have set him back a small fortune over the years.

‘Another time maybe,’ Gareth said, nodding politely. ‘I’ve told you all I know.’

The man paid particular interest to the carrier bag. ‘Something of hers?’

‘That’s really none of your business,’ he said, pushing by him and opening the doors.

‘Sure, thanks for the help,’ the grin broadening. ‘Oh, and be careful; it’s deadly out there,’ he warned.

There was nothing for it but to head home, he thought, totally deflated, his mind full of questions. The roads were better now, and he had no reason to hang about the hospital; she wasn’t going to return. That didn’t stop him scanning the streets and the people as he headed out, searching for any sign of her.

It took a while for him to drive home in the dark, especially once he hit open country where the snow remained thick on the ground. He passed the odd-car sitting nose down in a ditch, or abandoned by the roadside under heaps of snow. As usual, signs of humanity thinned the closer he got to Deller’s End. When he approached the spot where he’d hit Erica he unconsciously slowed down, even checked the hedge from where she’d come sliding down, as if somehow she might do the same today, as if he could conjure her up just by thinking about it.

Eventually he pulled the Land Rover to a sliding halt on the snow covered grass verge by the gate to Deller’s End. A chill wind caused the branches of trees to hiss like waves breaking on shingle and great clumps of dislodged snow came thudding silently to the ground. A full moon blazed brightly in a crisp black sky, the stars standing out clear and sharp.

As he trudged down the path he noticed the cottage door was ajar and he cursed himself for forgetting to lock it in his haste to tend to Erica. A small drift of snow had accumulated just inside the room. He scooped the snow away and closed the door, not thinking anything of it till he glanced down at the remains of damp, muddy footprints on the carpet leading into the living room. He turned on the light. He’d clearly made one set of prints when he’d dashed in to phone for the emergency services and collect the duvet from upstairs. But there was another set of prints, on closer inspection, that evidently did not belong to him. They were larger than his for one thing, and the remains of the deep tread told him unequivocally they were made by a pair of boots and not by the soles of his light shoes.

He began to get worried that, as remote as this place was, he’d been burgled. He went immediately to his few pieces of furniture — drawers, a bureau — but there was no evidence that anything had been disturbed. It was only when he turned to check upstairs that he noticed the symbol painted on the wall. A circle, painted in black, a cross in the middle of it, a star in the centre of the whole.

‘What the blazes…?’ he said, going closer to it.

He noticed it wasn’t a straightforward circle; it was a serpent eating its own tail.

He supposed he’d better call the police to report a break-in and damage to the wall. He was told to leave the scrawl until the police had been to check it out. An officer eventually turned up four days later. Break-ins were apparently not a priority for a force having to endure savage cuts to frontline staff and the pressures of the recent bad weather.

The terminally tired officer asked to be taken into the living room where the damage had been done.

‘Looks like the work of kids,’ he surmised. ‘Some young ne’er do well with time on his hands decided to take advantage of you leaving your door open.’ He looked meaningfully from above his pad at Gareth.

He grinned sheepishly. ‘Probably true, but aren’t the footprints on the large size for kids?’

‘Trust me, some teenagers these days are fully grown except for up here in the head. I think they come out of the womb fully grown. What you have there,’ he said with a decisive point of his pen at the symbol, ‘is a common or garden graffiti tag. Some kid marking out his territory.’ He slapped his cap back on purposefully. ‘My advice would be to get better locks and remember to use them in future. Isolated cottages like this are a magnet for trouble. Good job there’s nothing stolen; the insurance companies won’t pay up if you leave the door open and invite them in.’

Gareth took it on the chin and watched as the police officer took a photograph of the drawing. ‘If we can match this up with tags from elsewhere we might catch the culprit.’ He took more photos of the muddy footprints. They’d faded considerably, dried into the carpet. ‘Not your size,’ he noted. He pocketed the tiny camera. ‘So, you’re definitely sure nothing’s gone missing?’

‘As far as I can tell,’ said Gareth, ‘everything’s still here.’

‘Kids,’ he said, ‘fooling around.’

He told him they’d be in contact just as soon as they heard anything, which, he detected from the dull tone of voice, was likely to be never. Gareth walked him to the door, watched him get into the police car and drive away, rather rashly, thought Gareth, as the slush had turned to ice.

Searching out an old tin of emulsion paint Gareth did his best to cover up the symbol, but despite a couple of coats the thing kept creeping back. In the end he gave up, the ghost of the image never quite going away, reminding him these had been a strange and unsettling few days.

So who was she? Who was Erica and where the hell did she go? Likewise, who was the American guy searching for her? Eventually he stuffed the box of jewellery down in the cellar, in the hope that one day he’d be able to return it to her and partially to try and forget her. But he found that was impossible. She stuck like a thorn in his mind.

Life got back to something representing normal. But everything had been washed clean of the meaning it had before he met her. His work suffered. He really had to get more productive, he told himself. He took long walks along the coast in the hope that inspiration would blow in on the wind and that his growing obsession with Erica would blow away on it. She was a poison that had infected his system, he thought grimly. A poison that had begun with a kind of euphoria and was ending in a black swirling cloud of emotions which threatened to engulf and suffocate him.

He became so absorbed he forgot to stock up on provisions. It was only when he went to the cupboard to search out something to eat that he did a Mother Hubbard; same for the fridge. He slipped his arms into a coat and set off for the Cavendish store to grab a few groceries, reluctantly acknowledging that it was the mundane necessity of the everyday business of having to eat that forced him back into the real world again.