Maybe he should make a run for it? No. His attacker was taller, broader and looked so much stronger, making James feel like an insect trapped in the jaws of a fly.
Panic swelled and strapped itself squarely inside his chest, halting him after a couple of steps. He couldn’t continue. He felt like he was walking with only one shoe on. The man stopped too, pulling a length of rope from his pocket. That did it.
James leapt forward, surprising the man, who lost the grip on his elbow and fell, the flashlight lodging in a clump of snow. Skidding toward the front door, James searched with one hand in his pocket for the key. Ice crunched behind him. He had the key in the door when an arm slithered around his neck, gripped tight, and he was pulled back against a solid chest.
James fought, managing to loosen the hold on his neck, but an elbow crashed into the back of his skull. His head exploded with pain.
‘You should not have done that!’
He thought he knew the voice, struggled to recognise it, but failed. He turned quickly and tried to run but felt the rope slipping around his neck, harsh nylon scraping his skin. This might be his last chance.
He drew back his arm and connected with the man’s midriff but it bounced back. Pain shot through his elbow, up into his shoulder. The rope slackened and he collapsed to the ground. He turned over and scrambled to his knees. Run, he had to run. But he couldn’t get his feet under him. He shouted then. As loud as he could, from his terrified throat.
‘Help me. Help!’ His voice sounded like someone else’s echoing off the trees.
The rope tugged tighter. He tried to dig his hands into the frozen earth. He tried to halt the pull. He tried to shout once more, but the rope was taut, biting into his skin, dangerously close to cutting off his air. What could he do? Talk, he thought. I have to get him talking. He ceased his resistance but the man tightened the rope.
‘Come,’ the man said.
He steered James away from the cottage toward the oak tree with its branches casting demonic shapes on the whitewashed walls of the cottage. Beneath it, two wrought iron chairs, placed there for summer shade, looked out of place covered with mounds of snow.
‘What are you doing?’ James said, when the rope eased slightly.
The man threw one end of it into the air, looping it around a branch midway up the crusted bark. James prayed for a cloud to blot out the moon, to darken the garden into total blackness. With his eyes accustomed to the dusky light, he could see too much now and his brain filled with irrational thoughts and flashing, unframed pictures. One was an image of his mother, whom he never remembered having seen in his life. I’m going to die, he thought. He’s going to kill me and I can do nothing. His whole body convulsed in an unending trembling. He needed Susan. She always knew what to do. The man pivoted round and James looked into the masked face, stared at the eyes waltzing a wicked dance to a silent tune and he recognised them. Eyes he could never forget; eyes he would always remember.
‘It was you . . . Susan . . . you . . .’ he said. ‘I know you. I remember . . .’
James struggled weakly, attempting to pull away, but each movement collided with a further twist of the nylon. Now he was remembering. Too late? He tried to form words to delay the man.
‘The . . . night of the candles . . . the belt . . .’
‘You think you are clever. You were not always the smart one, were you? Back then, you had a girl to stand up for you. Not any more.’ The voice was so clear it could cut the ice into shards. The eyes ceased gyrating.
James frantically tore at the rope, pulling and jerking, scrunching his fingers under it, his stomach heaving with the strain. He couldn’t breathe. He tried to wrench free. He kicked out with his legs, showering snow into the air. He had to survive. He had to get help. He had the rest of his life to live. In a desperate attempt to wrong-foot his opponent, he allowed his body to flop into a dead weight. How could the man heave him upwards then?
‘Stand on the chair,’ the man commanded, swiping away a mound of snow with one sweep of his hand.
James stood still as if hypnotised, the rope furrowing a ridge into his neck, the man’s body heat overpowering his senses. He tasted saltiness at the back of his throat. Two arms encircled his body and lifted him on to one of the garden chairs. The furniture legs sank into the snow, wobbled, then settled. Before James could jump back down, the man hauled the rope further round the branch.
The snow fell faster and thicker. James swayed as the man stood on the other chair and knotted the rope.
‘It would be a fitting destiny for you to swing from the apple tree, James, but its branches are not strong enough. This oak will do the job instead.’
The rope was secure around the thick limb, midway up the bark. The falling snow darkened the moon but its thin light still cast a yellow ray over the courtyard. The laden branches trembled with the additional weight and James pleaded, moving his lips without sound.
Before he could action further thoughts from his brain to his body, the man kicked over the chair and it settled into the snow-covered earth.
As his chest ceased to inflate, his tongue protruded from purple lips, blood leaked dots on to the whites of his eyes and James saw the moon dance along the sky through a million white lights. He thought he could smell fresh apples as his body swayed in the windless air and his bowels opened. He heard the crunch of receding footsteps, before the white lights turned red, then black.
A thick blizzard of snow tumbled earthwards. A sharp snowstorm of biblical proportions. The body paled. Merging into its white surroundings, it cooled in death.
Eight
Rap music blared as Lottie opened her front door. Why did she let her kids listen to this trash? Because they’d listen to it somewhere else if she tried to stop them. Anyway, she couldn’t monitor the hundreds of songs on their iPods and phones and online. Live and let live.
‘I’m home,’ she called over the din.
No reply.
The kitchen displayed the remnants of a teenage cook-in. Empty Pot Noodles, sticky forks on the table and an open, half-full bottle of Coca-Cola. More than likely there since they had their breakfast – at lunchtime. Boots, shoes and trainers were thrown inside the back door. Unopened Christmas cards stacked on the table and the few she had opened were wilting with condensation in the kitchen window. The tree was in the sitting room, out of her sight. She hadn’t wanted to put it up. Sean had insisted and now he’d have the job of dismantling the raggedy assemblage of tinsel and balls. Tough.