For Rye Read online

  And that was that. The writing ended and the debts began. She’d tied that noose as an alternative to being forced into bankruptcy, into offices and appointments, into repayment plans and probably a job in the real world. But the noose was put on hold following the detective’s letter. She’d have skipped the funeral had it not been for the promise. Her mother had gone through years of hell for her, and the responsibility of honouring the dead woman had possessed her like a demon. But where had that damned promise landed her? Back in this house after nearly thirty years with one of the parents who’d left her to rot in that hospital. She shouldn’t be here. She ran a finger over the outline of the rope crammed into the front pocket of her mother’s apron.

  It’ll hold.

  She knelt by the hearth, considering whether to restart the fire as Thomas’s unseeing eyes bored into the back of her head from his armchair. She turned and flicked a dirty-grey moth from a cushion before perching on the sofa. The moths had been a staple of the house for as long as she could remember, an enduring torment for Sylvia whose relentless cleaning had done nothing to dissuade their stubborn residency. Their place of nesting had always remained an enduring mystery, the pursuit of which her father strictly forbade.

  She cast her eyes to the sprawling oil painting above the mantelpiece. The imposing spectacle had been a childhood horror; waves clawed at screaming men and women as they fought for higher ground, their expressions of dread detailed to perfection. As a girl, Thomas had ensured her complete understanding of the scene’s depiction: the Great Flood, rising to rip the accursed mortal coils from these vile sinners.

  Her father was infatuated with the thing. He reserved a special look of adoration for the painting, one which only his beloved Noah, and maybe the latest Samson, ever found themselves on the receiving end. However, behind that wooden, fixed smile, Renata’s mother had held a very different sentiment for the framed flood, a sentiment which idled just outside the facility of Renata’s recollection.

  Her thoughts were interrupted by Thomas’s spluttering. They’d sat in silence for hours, the fire now reduced to glimmering embers. She instinctively glanced at the grandfather clock, only to find its hands frozen in the same place as when she’d arrived.

  ‘It’s late,’ she said, working an antiseptic wipe over her hands. ‘Sorry, Father. I don’t know where the time went. I’ll get your medication.’

  Renata made for the hallway and ascended the creaking wooden staircase, cringing as the hem of her ankle-length skirt hung dangerously close to the grimy steps. She glanced down the gloomy hall to Noah’s room at the far end, then squeezed into the small lavatory on the landing. She took the opportunity to give her hands a quick wash and adjust her hair grips, then opened the medicine cabinet. A pharmacy’s worth of bottles and blister packs awaited her, many of which bore the same name: Dexlatine. The muscle relaxant, as a note left by Ramsay had explained, was less a sedative and more a paralysis potion, a single pill having the ability to calm Thomas’s shaking body and, once the drug had time to take effect, subtly freeze his muscles into a motionless state. A tub of Vicks, bottles of painkillers, and packets of sleeping pills filled the remainder of the shelves, the latter of which would ease the mind inhabiting the paralysed nerves into unconsciousness. The medications were a drastic measure, but his temper was savage enough at the best of times. No one wanted to see how much worse it could get when sleep deprived.

  Renata hurried back to the living room with Thomas’s dose of Dexlatine. She hoped it would ease the journey to the master bedroom, but she was slight of frame and the steep stairs proved a struggle. It was like carrying a downed climber the wrong direction to safety; how her mother accomplished the feat she’d never know. Stored on the landing was a second wheelchair in which she wheeled him to the bathroom. She had no trouble translating the scorching scowl he gave her at the offer of assistance.

  The transfer of Thomas into his nightclothes was an awkward affair, during which he kept his cloudy eyes locked straight ahead on the discoloured wallpaper behind Renata. She pulled the sheets over him, wincing at the feel of the filthy fabric, and sat on the end of the bed, watching the quivering covers settle.

  She placed a sleeping pill in his mouth and held a glass of water to his coarse lips. He swallowed then let out a long, rasping sigh. She looked down at the blister pack and bottle of pills in her hands. Her mind wandered back to hospital, back to that pure, perfect white. How she missed those corridors, those empty, endless—

  ‘What is it?’ he croaked suddenly.

  Renata looked at him. ‘Father?’

  ‘Tell me what it is you want to say, girl. You’ve been stuttering like a freak all evening.’ Saliva hung from his lips like liquid stalactites. ‘Out with it.’

  She glimpsed the man she used to know, still manning the cockpit of this ruined vessel. ‘I…well, Father, I…’

  ‘Lord, have mercy,’ he said. ‘The girl babbles like her mother.’ Renata jolted as dynamite suddenly exploded from the frail old man’s mouth. ‘SPEAK.’

  She took a deep breath and threw a fresh shovel-load into the little engine’s furnace.

  Choo-choo.

  ‘Father,’ she began, fingering her jersey, ‘sorry, but…I was hoping to ask you about, well…’ Another shovel-load. ‘…about Noah.’

  In a Quentin C. Rye scary story, such a scene may have been embellished with the pattering of rain against the window, maybe some thunder and lightning for good measure, or the shadows of branches reaching across the room like bony claws. In this scary story, however, the evening was calm and fresh, the room well-lit and claw-free, yet the moment froze as if on a triple dose of Dexlatine. Within this paralysed second, she waited.

  ‘I expect you’d like to know when he’ll be joining us. I expect you’d like to know when he’ll be arriving…’

  ‘Well, I mean—’

  ‘…so YOU can leave.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Father. I just—’

  ‘Let me tell you what I’d like to know, girl.’ He struggled to his elbows, fighting the paralysis already taking hold. ‘I’d like to know why God gave me a girl, one who soiled my family with nothing but anguish and misery.’

  She stepped back as the monster emerged.

  ‘I’d like to know,’ he snarled, ‘why after all these years of service, our heavenly Father took from me the only righteous thing in my life.’ His crooked fingers tried to reach for her but were held back by the medication, an invisible protector. ‘Except I already know the answers, child. I know because the Almighty has granted them upon me through the unfolding of tragedy – the tragedy of my family.’

  Renata stumbled into the half-open door.

  ‘He has revealed to me that this family…’ His milky eyes swelled towards her, a torment on her flesh. ‘…is forsaken.’

  Outside, the fields swayed gently in the placid breeze. Although it would return, the mist eased its watch for the night, the clear, crisp moonlight blanketing the calm comings and goings of the meadows surrounding the house. The clock tower was audible from across the pastures, tolling the midnight hour.

  Renata’s hand gripped the doorframe. She watched in terror as the skeletal shape of Thomas Wakefield gave off a violent spasm, before finally sinking into the mattress. He stretched his face in her direction as he deflated, his jaw extending with unnatural elasticity.

  ‘Change in will…’ he hissed.

  Tears stung.

  ‘…strength of service.’

  4

  One

  She flattened the pedal.

  Two

  Flames flew past. Her hands, dripping with some sort of slick, jet-black oil, tightened around the wheel as she bore witness to the dying throes of all, a world collapsing.

  Three

  A white light of pain struck with every count, that old familiar pickaxe to her brain. She pushed the engine through fire.

  Four

  A clatter from beneath as chunks of chassis broke free. Th
e sound of tumbling metal faded behind her.

  Five

  The flesh of her blackened hands melted into burning vinyl.

  Six

  She threw the vehicle into a blank canvas of fog. She looked at the passenger seat. Sure enough, there was the spade, red as blood.

  Seven

  The air became searing smoke.

  Eight

  She glanced at the lava crawling on the floor beneath her seat.

  Nine

  The windows smashed, glass flying in scorching shards. She craned her neck to the sky. The magma now raged like waves across the curvature of the atmosphere.

  Ten

  She whipped her head back inside as fire rained from above. The surrounding fields erupted.

  Eleven

  Then the shape appeared, right on cue. That vague, fluid, yellow shape. It loomed in the fog ahead, unmoving. Her entire being thrust the engine harder into the mist, yet the spectre remained fixed and unwavering from its station.

  It began to resemble a figure.

  Twelve

  She recoiled in agony as the ice pick inside her head continued swinging with each count.

  The blazing sky became an ocean of flames falling from the heavens, a mighty, incurved belly finally released in a parachute of fire. The car broke apart around her, falling away piece by piece. The spade gave itself to the inferno as the vehicle’s frame crumbled, retiring into its own fiery wake. Her hands continued to drip their black, sappy liquid.

  And still she flew towards the yellow apparition.

  Thirteen

  Renata awoke.

  She lay on the child-sized bed in her old room, feet sticking out the end. She stared at the ceiling. Soaked in sweat and gasping for air, she thought of the dream.

  Too many years to count: that’s how long it had dominated her nights. Its intensity was overpowering, always leaving a vivid trauma upon awakening. Worst of all were the stabbing pains in her head throughout. Thirteen, always thirteen.

  She’d put the apocalyptic nightmares down to a cognitive remnant of the crash, fractured memories haunting her. Her doctors had told her it was only natural considering how little memory of the accident her amnesia had allowed. A day trip to the coastal village of Hadwell-on-Sea gone wrong, she’d learnt. Then she’d had her run-in with the Quentin C. Rye display at Stonemount Central.

  Horror Highway. Glimpsed by chance as a little girl, she hadn’t thought of the book for an eternity, but with its burning pickup truck and phantom in the fog, it seemed like a closer fit than anything else. And yet the dream, besides the fire and brimstone, was different – felt different. The nightmare didn’t feel like a retelling of images from some cheap horror.

  She rubbed her eyes then checked the clasped bun at the back of her head, before resetting the usual mass of grips and clips in her black hair. She squinted around the room, dragging the heaped boxes into focus. These four walls once housed columns of precariously stacked romance novels, until one day, along with her mother’s collection, they’d vanished. Their sudden removal hadn’t been questioned, as was best for everyone.

  The cramped space was now a storage room, with overflowing cardboard boxes, crates, and trunks littering nearly all available floor space. A brief investigation had confirmed the missing books of her youth were not included within these assortments of unwanted kitchen appliances, children’s toys, and threadbare clothing. It had never felt like her bedroom without the books, but it had never really felt like it with them, either. Likewise, she’d never been able to convince herself this house was home. Decades later, she was still unconvinced.

  You didn’t forget a thirty-year-old dream, but you learnt to live with it. Besides, reality has a habit of stealing your attention from the artefacts of sleep, particularly when there’s an earthquake outside your bedroom window.

  It started as a distant growl, but soon grew to seismic rumbling. Quentin’s bike? No, too…vast. Broken springs creaked as she rose from the bed and padded across bare floorboards to the window.

  The earthquake was a convoy of articulated lorries, struggling along the winding track that led past the Wakefield house. Renata made out the company name plastered across the side of the leading eighteen-wheeler:

  Rye Productions

  Obviously a man of his word, Quentin appeared to be kick-starting the project he’d promised the people of Millbury Peak. Although now a stranger to the town, Renata still knew the uproar this invasion would cause.

  Suddenly, an explosion of light.

  She cursed her cranial pains before realising, agony as they were, they’d never thrown her across a room or caused windows to smash.

  She gasped with pain at the broken glass pressing into her hands as she sat up. The room was surprisingly silent, apart from the high-pitched buzzing; she swatted at the moth in her ear, until it dawned on her moths don’t buzz. Her overdriven eardrums calmed, the chaotic sounds outside replacing the ringing in her head. She struggled to her feet and peered out the broken window, heart racing.

  It was a warzone. Flames billowed from the back of the largest articulated lorry at the tail end of the convoy, the drivers and passengers of the remaining vehicles running to aid the two men trapped in its cabin. Renata stood frozen as the panic unfolded, until a second explosion from the same truck forced her back, screaming. She whipped her head round as banging came from downstairs. She threw on her mother’s dressing gown and raced for the front door.

  ‘Ren…I mean, Miss Wakefield,’ Quentin stammered, standing in the doorway, ‘I…I don’t…those guys, they’re still in the truck. The thing…it just—’

  ‘Mr Rye, I know. I saw everything. What on earth’s happening?’

  Quentin glanced over his shoulder. ‘I got no idea. I was up front riding with one of the sound guys, then I heard the explosion at the back of the convoy. It’s Dwayne and Rich, Ren. They’re stuck in the cabin.’ He placed a foot in the threshold. ‘Please, we gotta help them. Your phone…the emergency services, we have to—’

  ‘Mr Rye…’

  ‘Call me Quentin, please.’

  A small fire extinguisher sprayed into the inferno, its effect akin to the throwing of a glass of water into a volcano. Howling came from the trapped men inside the cabin as members of the production team tugged on the unmoving doors.

  Renata took a breath.

  ‘Come inside, Quentin.’

  ‘If ever a sign were needed,’ Thomas choked from his wheelchair at the top of the stairs, ‘let this be it.’ A droll of biblical mutterings followed, eventually fading down the corridor back to the master bedroom. The grey, immobile hound by the fireplace remained as uninterested as a rug.

  Renata handed Quentin a mug of cocoa. ‘Sorry about my father,’ she said.

  ‘After all I’ve put his family through? Come on, he could throw me his best right hook and I’d only thank him.’ He smiled and crossed his legs. Mickey Mouse socks peeked out from beneath his brown corduroys. ‘Luckily for me he doesn’t look like he has much of a right hook on him.’

  Renata flinched.

  Quentin, recrossing his legs, lowered his voice. ‘Seems all I’ve done recently is bring pain to you folks.’

  ‘None of this is your fault.’

  More sirens screamed down the country tracks. The cause of the explosion was yet to be identified, but what had been established was that the hoses were only angering the flames further. All efforts seemed to do nothing but goad the fire.

  ‘I can’t believe this,’ said Quentin, jiggling his foot. ‘First Sylvia, now this. I mean, thank God they managed to get those guys out, but they’re gonna be messed up.’ The mug trembled in his hand. ‘They were right, I shouldn’t have come here. I did this, Ren.’

  She took his cocoa and set it on the table.

  People. She was surprised to find she seemed to have a fairly good idea how to act around them. What to say, where to look, how to react; there was nothing natural about it, but really it was nothing mo
re than going through the motions, like writing a character, so long as she could keep a lid on her anxiety. As a teenager she’d thought she hated people, then it dawned on her that she just didn’t care for them. Most of all, it was their mindless clamouring for individuality, like children fighting for a place in the spotlight, a feral pack she had no interest in joining.

  And yet, inadvertently, she’d claimed a small portion of that spotlight for herself. She’d been an author – a professional author. It should have felt good put like that but, despite her passion, it had really been no more than a means to an end, the end in question being the means to live alone on an empty rock surrounded by crashing waves.

  And now a simple letter from a simple detective in a simple town regarding a not-so-simple murder had pulled her off that rock and onto a couch next to this man. He, too, was an author, but one whose share of the spotlight vastly dwarfed her own. His writing had been the vehicle for an empire of horror, and with it fame and fortune.

  Inspired and poetic, that’s how her writing had begun, artistic in its flair and technique – until sales dwindled, leading to her publisher identifying the corner of the market in which Renata could realistically shift most units.

  Units. She’d been shocked by the word, but had come to associate it, and the money attached, with the possibility of avoiding a real job with real people. Those ‘units’ had afforded her the life of a hermit.

  Dumb it down, Ms Wakefield! the letter from Damian Abbott at Highacre House Publishing had read, written, she’d imagined, from behind the horizon of a sprawling desk at the top of a skyscraper. That’s the secret. I can see you know what they want, it’s just that in your stories, what they want is a little…overshadowed.

  Substance, she’d thought. Overshadowed by substance. She’d been won over in the end by this little niche he’d identified for her scrawny romance texts. She’d gone on to turn this dumbing down of which he’d spoke into a veritable art form.

  She looked at Quentin, a man on the verge of tears, and began to wonder if they weren’t so different, after all. He dealt in death, she traded in dumbed-down romantic tripe, yet they may as well have been hookers under the same pimp.