Chapter 49
In my old fantasies, this would be the moment when his eyes would widen with understanding and then fear.
He’d raise his hands, palms up, head shrinking back into his shoulders.
I wouldn’t have to say a word. He’d nod his head and back up and say, “Keep the noise down. Got it. Sorry, pal.” Then he’d creep back inside and out of view for a moment and the music would stop.
He would peer out sheepishly and ask, “All good now, yeah?” And, again, I wouldn’t have to say a thing.
I’d just raise my chin and casually sling the hammer up onto my shoulder.
I’d turn slowly, eyes still on him, so he knew I’d be watching, and then I’d return home triumphant. Badass.
I had the distinct feeling that wasn’t going to happen here.
“I’ve been expecting you,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper.
He pushed the door open wider, beckoned me in with a nod of his head and disappeared inside.
I hesitated on the threshold, hammer held behind me, my hand clammy on the handle.
The light above me on the pavement went out.
I jumped inside. Darkness swallowed the space I’d inhabited. The music suddenly grew louder.
I entered a communal stairwell similar to all the others I’d seen in Edinburgh’s various tenements.
Concrete walls painted in two tones of gloss pressed in on either side, and an iron balustrade with a wooden handrail spiralled up to the floors above.
The only light came from an open door to a flat on the ground floor.
“You thought a hammer would scare me”—the gaunt young man leant against the wall between me and the open door—“didn’t you?”
Coloured lights bounced through the doorway behind him. The unce-unce-unce-unce rattled my teeth, yet I could still hear the man speaking, his voice raspy and hushed. His eyes, heavy-lidded and unblinking, regarded me coldly.
“I know you have it behind your back. You can’t hide it.”
He stepped into my space. I froze with the sudden intimacy. The heat of his body warmed my chest. His breath brushed my neck. I pursed my lips tight. He reached around me and gently, calmly, took the hammer out of my hand.
“The thing about a weapon is”—he casually tilted the hammer as if checking the balance—“if you’re going to bring it somewhere, you’ve got to be prepared to use it.”
Lights danced in the flat, but there were no shadows of anyone else. I was alone with this stranger. And he was alone with me. The stairwell felt small all of a sudden. And so very lonely.
“But you hadn’t thought about that, had you?” He twirled the hammer in his hand. “You thought the sight of it would send me shaking. Because that’s what would frighten you.”
He tutted. The lights from the room behind him cast long, sharp flashes on the walls around me, putting the world into a slow staccato. He swaggered in stop-motion in the blaze and shade.
“That’s why I kept the music loud. Because I knew there was nothing you could do about it.
I had your number the moment I saw you, peeking through your curtains, tutting in your dressing gown.
I know your kind. You’re the snob who kicks over the cup of change while the jakey’s asleep.
You’re the busybody who tips a noisy cat into a wheelie bin.
You’ll dish it out on those who can’t fight back, but you wouldn’t dream of standing up to the real target of your anger.
Full of rage, but none of the balls to do anything about it.
Too scared of losing the little you have—the job you hate, your crummy flatshare, the freedom you’re too scared to do anything with—to gain a little respect. ”
Flash-flash-flash
Unce-unce-unce
Like the crack of a whip, his arm flew up and struck the wall next to my head with the hammer. I flinched. The old gloss-painted plaster cracked around the impact. As he removed the hammer from the wall, a small chunk came away with it.
“You’re a coward.”
He put his hand over the hole in the wall.
“That’s why you could never do what needs to be done.”
He swung the hammer into the knuckles of his hand.
The sound rang in the cramped stairway, vibrating the walls and the stairs in time to the music.
KRunce-KRunce-KRunce-KRunce
My eyes couldn’t leave the violence. I was glued to it. Each flash of the lights from the flat revealed a new visceral snapshot. A finger bent the wrong way. A knuckle burst like a grape. A bone piercing skin.
I froze with the horror of it.
Flash-flash-flash
A hand caught in a tangle of metal. A painted fingernail hanging by a thread. Hot pink.
I blinked for what felt like the first time. The image was there and gone in a flicker of neon light.
Suddenly the gaunt man stepped to me, head bent to get into my eyeline. I jumped.
“Look at me when I’m talking to you!” he roared.
Hot flecks of spittle landed on my cheeks.
My teeth chattered as if I were freezing.
It was like all those times I’d been screamed at not to cry and yet the tears would always come anyway.
Don’t cry or I’ll give you something to cry about.
I desperately wanted to run, but there was nowhere to run to.
The door behind me was gone. The stairs above had been taken away by darkness.
And the way ahead was blocked by a man with a hammer and the will to use it.
“I-I-I don’t even know you.” I managed to force the words out despite my fluttering jaw.
“And you didn’t care!” He threw the hammer against the wall by my head.
The ringing was so loud. I clutched my ears and scrunched my eyes closed.
“Look at me!”
I opened my eyes and now he was different. He was taller with a full head of hair, and wearing a stylish, blue-striped shirt.
“Would you have felt different if I’d looked like this?”
The lights flashed.
Now he was an older man, squat, wearing a white vest, with hair sprouting from his ears.
“Or this?”
The lights flashed.
Now he was the teen boy who’d leapt out at me in the village. Small and untrusting.
“Or this?”
The lights flashed again and now he was just a silhouette, lights flashing around him, music pounding through my skull.
I held my hands over my ears. That same ringing came to me again. I was trapped. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.
Fight him! Steal back the hammer! Smash his skull! Make him pay!
Then I thought about what Rowan had said up on the hills.
“The only way to win when you’re seeing red is to walk away,” he’d said. “Doesn’t matter what anyone thinks of you or how angry they made you or how stupid or weak you think you look. Walk away.”
“You’re right. I don’t know you,” I shouted over the music, eyeing the dark outline of the hammer in his hand carefully, “but I think I know enough.”
I forced myself to look at the flashing lights in the empty room behind him.
“You always played music late at night. But I never saw anyone coming over. I never heard any talking like you get at parties.”
He hit the hammer against the wall again. I felt it move through the air in front of my face. The noise was horrendous.
“I don’t know what life you had. Whether you worked or you didn’t. Whether you were drunk or sober. But I know you were alone.”
His hand froze. The music stopped. I lowered my arms from around my head
“You were awake and alone in the early hours of the morning. My gran once said that’s called the wolf hour. I don’t know who came up with that, but that’s when your mood is at its lowest. It’s when people have their worst thoughts.”
I wasn’t speaking very loudly, but every word boomed through that empty, dark space.
“Maybe I’m wrong.” I reached into my pocket and found the spool of thread. “But if I’m not, it would make sense that someone would want to make a noise at that hour. To drown out the thoughts, to bring some life back into the night, hell, just to tell the world you’re still here.”
The lights behind him flashed slower and slower, cutting our outlines into shadows along the walls. I wound the thread around my finger.
“It was never about me. You didn’t even know I existed.”
I pulled the thread tight.
The light stopped flashing. All was still and quiet. That loud kind of quiet you get after a long period of noise. Like your ears can’t quite trust the silence.
The gaunt figure stood frozen in front of me, hammer still raised. I waited for the drop. Because by now I had learned there is always a drop.
A squeal of feedback burst through the air behind him. A piercing pain shot through my head. The lights blared bright white. The man disintegrated in the flare.
I flinched back, tumbling over my own feet.
The walls crumbled around me, raining cement dust and old iron railings.
I fell onto a dark wooden floor.
And then the axe fell beside me with a dull clang.