Life at the End of the Road Read online

  On my first trip up to see Laura’s hometown, under better circumstances, she had shown me this view while gushing about the times she’d spent here. We had wandered up the winding road from her mother’s home to the north side of town and sat on an old wooden bench, cans of cheap lager at our side. As we sat watching the view in front of us turn dark as the sun set behind our backs, we spoke about all the events in our lives which had to turn out a certain, specific way for us to end up here, at this moment, with each other. As the beer in our final cans grew warm, the conversation came to a natural close, and we sat for half an hour longer, watching the lights around town be slowly extinguished. As Laura began to be overcome with tiredness, we made the long three minute walk back to her mother’s house, and I tucked her into bed. On my second trip, there would be nobody to do this for.

  Something brushed against my leg. Instinctively I recoiled. Looking down, by my right foot, a brown, speckled cat stared up at me with big, round, yellow eyes.

  ‘Meow,’ the cat began.

  ‘Hey, little girl, you aite?’ I asked, stooping down for a stroke of her head.

  ‘Meow,’ she answered, clearly keen on conversation. She brushed against my leg a second time and looked up at me once again. Her thin tail twisted and turned.

  ‘Do we know each other?’

  No reply. She began to walk off. Maybe I had offended her. I watched her walk a good fifteen, twenty metres away, before she stopped to look around at me again.

  ‘Meow,’ she repeated - a woman of few words.

  I began to follow her down the high street towards the shops, wincing every time a car passed for fear of witnessing a feline hit and run. My worries were in vain, however, as the little traffic that came to Redbury didn’t begin to faze her. This was her home as much as it was to the human inhabitants.

  We turned off to the right before the bus stop, and as we travelled down the increasingly narrow street, I recognised the house at the end as that of Laura’s father. Sure enough, this was where my new friend stopped - at the last place in this town that I wanted to be. She turned once more to look at me, as though beckoning me on, and stepped delicately through the gaps in the cast iron gate.

  Although I wasn’t particularly superstitious, some small part of me was sure that I was standing outside of my future father-in-law’s house for a reason. It was just as I remembered it being when I visited it several years ago, albeit possibly even more run-down. Black paint peeled and flaked from the low fence that surrounded the perimeter of the property, having weathered away due to the lack of upkeep. The paint on the house was much the same, and the old mock-Tudor beams had faded in the sun. The second digit of the door number hung upside down from its last remaining bolt. Despite the wear and tear, the house still remained impressive, looming over me in front of the eerie forest backdrop. It was no wonder Laura hadn’t moved in with her father all those years ago.

  My head started pounding in time with my heart pumping the blood around my body. Louder and louder it got, like an army marching ever closer. My vision started to cloud.

  ‘Laura…,’ I found myself mumbling - to nobody in particular.

  ‘Meow!’ the cat shrieked at the door, ‘Meow! Meow!’

  I practised my breathing. Slow… and steady. In… and out. The only sounds I could hear were my own heart, and, in the distance, the cat mewling. Slowly my senses were restored to normal, and the other sounds of Redbury returned to me. In the distance, there were passing cars, birds chirped in the trees, a dog barked faintly.

  ‘Meow!’ my feline friend continued.

  The heavy wooden door was unlocked with a clunk from the inside, and a man in his sixties looked down at the mewling cat, before welcoming her in with a grunt. As he began to close the door, he looked up, and Robert Kamryn and I locked eyes.

  We both stood as still as statues for a few moments, neither of us daring to make the first move. Then, with a boldness that I didn’t know I had in me, I began to take confident strides towards the house. Robert stepped away from the door, holding it so it was barely open at all. I continued walking, and upon arriving at the threshold, went through the motions of knocking firmly.

  The door creaked open as Robert opened it more slowly than I’d have thought possible.

  ‘Rey,’ he noted.

  ‘Rober- Mr Kamryn,’ I replied, matching his tone.

  No reply. Robert Kamryn was much less of a conversationalist than his cat.

  ‘Can I come in?’

  Without a word, Robert stepped aside, opening the door just wide enough for someone to step through. He continued to watch me, a sombre expression on his face.

  I looked around. The interior of the house was somehow in even more disrepair than the exterior. Mould lined the walls in virtually every corner, with paper peeling away in some places. Newspapers piled in corners of the hallway in which we were standing. Looking through to the kitchen, I could see that the mess continued, with empty beer cans lined up in formation against the backs of the work units.

  The tortoiseshell cat knocked a bottle over as she ran up the stairs, where she settled, watching us. This event achieved a grunt from our gracious host, who ambled over to pick the bottle up.

  ‘I met your cat,’ I ventured. ‘She was nice.’

  ‘Is Laura with you?’ Straight to the point - maybe that was best for all parties involved.

  ‘You haven’t seen her?’ I asked. Surely my visit wasn’t going to be this fleeting, although perhaps that was the reason he’d gone immediately to this subject. It was either that or she was the only subject we had in common.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh. R-Right. Problem is that’s what everyone’s saying right now. Nobody’s seen her in a couple of days.’

  Robert snorted. ‘Sounds like her.’

  ‘Sorry, what do you… what do you mean?’ I asked - the intention being more to make a point than to receive a sincere answer.

  ‘Sounds like her… doesn’t it. Always running off… Partying. You know what she’s like, you know what she’s like.’

  ‘That’s not a particularly nice way to talk about your daughter.’

  ‘Oh… don’t start this again… we had enough of this last time. We get it, we get it… you’re her knight in shining armour… protecting her from her evil old-’

  He descended into a fit of coughs, spluttering, whacking himself on the chest to shift phlegm from his deteriorating lungs.

  Mr Kamryn seemed to be struggling to find an empty space on which to place this bottle he was holding. In the end, he settled for the bottom of the stairs - exactly where the cat had initially toppled it over.

  ‘You have to keep her in check, you know,’ he continued, ‘before she gets herself into some real trouble.’

  ‘The thing I don’t think you’re getting, Robert, is that she might already be in some “real trouble”,’ I asserted. ‘Nobody’s heard from her in a couple of days, so I, well, Anna and I are-’

  ‘Anna? Anna Tyndall? She’s here?’ Robert asked, suddenly engaged in the conversation, fear behind his eyes. Finally, the reaction I was looking for: fear. Fear that his only child might be in some, as he put it, “real trouble”.

  ‘Yeah, she is. We’re taking this seriously. I dunno what sort of ideas you have about your daughter, but I’m pretty sure that Anna and I know her better than you do, nowadays at least.’

  ‘Ok… ok.’ Robert Kamryn gestured for me to calm down.

  ‘Have you seen her? Last few days? We really need to know.’

  ‘No… No, I haven’t… Sam told me she was in town… but she hasn’t stopped by.’

  ‘Sam? Who’s Sam?’

  ‘Sam! You must know Sam.’ My confused expression didn’t shift, so he continued. ‘You really have no idea about this town at all, do you?’

  I shook my head. Of course I didn’t. Redbury wasn’t the centre of the universe to me, like it seemed to be to him.

  ‘Sam…,’ he continued, spelling it out e
xcruciatingly slowly, ‘Is the kid who works in the shop. Sells you your loaf and the daily rag.’

  ‘The man with the… the long hair?’ I asked, thinking about my encounter just an hour ago.

  ‘Yes… that’s the one… needs a shave and a haircut.’

  ‘Right. Right. Why would he know that she was in town?’

  Robert Kamryn smiled a knowing smile. ‘He…’ A pause, then he continued, almost as patronisingly slowly as before. ‘Well… let’s put it like this… when you work in that shop, you know all the comings and goings. All the old dears… they like to have a chat… you know how it is. Gossip, gossip, gossip… all day long. And he’s there to speak to. A “nice young man”, they call him… You know what that means, you know what that means. Not that there isn’t things to gossip about in this town… with those things… those things in the shadows… not that you’d understand, not that you’d understand…’

  Crash. The cat knocked the empty bottle over once again, in this instance smashing it on the hardwood floor. This time, her keeper wasn’t so impressed. He turned, shouting, ‘Will you… fucking… STOP?’

  The cat let out a sad mewl and scampered away to darker corners of the house, only once looking back to give me one last look.

  I called after her, my voice high-pitched in tone, ‘It’s ok, girl!’

  Laura’s father looked at me with a puzzled expression. ‘Ok, Rey… good seeing you… as always.’

  ‘Oh… we’re done?’

  ‘Yes, we’re done.’ He walked back to the front door, opened it for me, indicating for me to step through it. I did so without sharing a goodbye.

  As I passed through the peeling iron gate once more, I turned back to look at the house. Robert Kamryn hadn’t been my biggest fan on his cheerier days, but the frostiness with which he greeted me today was new. Was it possible that he was hiding something? Or was it simply embarrassment at the state of his home? Or a consequence of our previous encounter? If this cat really had been the universe’s vessel in guiding me to my answer, she hadn’t been particularly useful.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, and I was overcome with the eerie sensation of being watched. I scoured the windows of the house for signs of Robert Kamryn, but there were none. Perhaps it was arrogant to think he paid me that much heed. Behind me, the street was deserted, not a person - or domesticated animal - in sight.

  In the shadows of the dense forest behind the house, however, a ghostly silhouette of a man examined me. As I stared back, his eyes seemed to glow an odd blood red hue.

  4

  In Regard to the Foxes

  I appreciate that at this point we’ve started to cover (or at the very least allude to) some of the darker elements of the story to come. Laura’s father, for example, as we discovered in the previous chapter, was living a fairly miserable life in a house he no longer had any wish to maintain, sustained only by an alcohol dependency, and with only the company of a cat who seemed to loathe him as much as I did. I have, to this day, great pity for this cat, and can only wish she is out there somewhere living a better life. It is best I say no more on this particular matter, as it may spoil certain plot points which are still to come.

  In the following chapter, sadly, we will discover that more harm has come to our four-legged friends. To spare you any unnecessary worry, I will tell you now that the only pet to die is Max, the family pet, whose death began this whole sequence of events. There is no second dog, cat, or hamster at this point in the story - or indeed at any point in the story - to whom any harm will come.

  However, the Fox, as I am sure you are aware, has not yet been described in this story, and it is with dismay that I inform you that it too will suffer a sorry fate. I hope it reassures you, at least to some extent, that this harm was suffered a great many years ago, and as such, I could not feasibly have saved it from its fate.

  As this harm was suffered in the town of Redbury while Anna was living there as a child, it is possible that - had she taken a different route in life - this harm might have been avoided. However, while Anna may be brash and cold with many human beings, she is a strong advocate for animal rights, and is particularly fond of foxes. With this in mind, I think it is safe to assume that had Anna known that this fox would suffer, she would have done all in her power to prevent it.

  ‘He hadn’t been eating very well, Anna,’ Joyce informed me.

  I could have seen that for myself, though. Max - poor, lovely, loyal Max - was laid flat on the ground, thin to the bone. I was conscious that Joyce would have rather it was her daughter who was sharing this important moment with her - the moment that they put their dog to rest. But, with time pressing on (he was beginning to smell), I had to suffice in Laura’s absence.

  I’d known Max for many years, and I thought he was the only one who had maybe been a better friend to Laura than I had. Through Laura’s parents’ separation, he had been there, comforting her. He’d insist on spending every night at the foot of the bed. This was even, as I’d seen for myself, when Laura would close the door to keep him out. Max had has this incredible knack of hanging from the door handle until the door opened, and would lie on the ground, pushing against it with his paws to force it open. When I would sleep over, as a kid, I’d seen this for myself. Laura had closed the door in order to keep him out, but when the door handle started shaking, she wasn’t annoyed. She only rolled her eyes, and always had a smile on her face when he joined her. They’d definitely shared a connection - while Max was the family dog, Laura was his human.

  Joyce pointed to a corner of the garden by the small greenhouse.

  ‘There.’

  I had offered to be the one to dig the hole, although, having not done this before, I had not realised how much work this was going to be. Really there should have been two of us digging, but Rey had slipped off in the night. It was almost as though he had sensed that this job would need doing. And that it would be exhausting.

  Joyce brought out (and kept topped up) a jug of cold water, with freshly cut cucumber floating amongst the cubes of ice, and I thanked her for it. Although it was October now, the weather was uncharacteristically warm. It was global warming causing this, I assumed.

  When the job was done, I wiped my brow, and summoned Joyce over to say a few words. She was a sentimental woman, and Max’s eulogy reflected that. She shared with me her fondest memories of her canine friend, and I thought back on my own.

  As Joyce finished, I took one last close look at Max. The weight he had lost in the days leading up to his eventual death was harrowing, but not nearly as much as the changes to his eyes. Previously soft, wide, green eyes, they were now red. Joyce saw me staring.

  ‘I don’t know how it happened, with the eyes, I really don’t,’ Joyce continued, sobbing. ‘Although, I really don’t know how any of the stuff that’s happened recently has happened. Everything is out of control, isn’t it?’

  I’d seen this before, though - the eyes. The blood red, demonic eyes where only looking at them made you uncomfortable. I remembered:

  We were thirteen, Laura and I. Maybe fourteen. We were at the age where we were beginning to find more interesting things to do after school than just hanging around in our bedrooms. Laura had discovered an interest in Sam, a boy from our class. I had only a general interest in boys, and an imagination that often took me to exotic places like Highford, the next town over. In my mind, Highford seemed to be a whole world away (rather than the actual distance of just over three kilometres).

  On this particular night, after school, we were at a loss. At this age we wanted to be out meeting people, but in the context of our local area, opportunities to do this were rather limited. Laura, ever the rebel, decided that the best use of our time that evening would be to steal one of her father’s cigarettes, then to go out and share it.

  At the time, I was fully conscious that Laura was the cooler of the two of us. My greatest rebellion at this point had been watching a 15-rated movie without asking my
mum first (although, to be fair, she probably would have said it was fine). With Laura being “the cool one”, I agreed to follow her lead.

  We snuck into her parents’ house, not wanting them to know we had been around (in case her father was counting the number of cigarettes he had left). We climbed over the back fence (a feat easier said than done when you’re wearing school uniform) and crept in through the back door into the kitchen. This was back when the kitchen was decorated like it was still the sixties; the Kamryn household had horrible brown cupboards with faded yellow worktops, like their colour palette was limited only to that of bodily fluids.

  As if the universe had wanted us to succeed, Robert’s pack of Bensons was sitting on the counter in front of us. And, even better, they were in an empty room. It was his favourite, and only, brand. We’d done it. Mission complete (and it was so easy!). We were not, however, expecting Max, who was just a young pup at this time, to be so excited to see Laura. He’d heard the noises in the kitchen and trotted in to investigate, but as soon as he saw his best friend, began yapping excitedly, licking her face and jumping up and down. He was a furry ball of happiness bouncing around.

  Of course, this commotion brought Laura’s father into the room. Laura froze, pack of cigarettes in hand, caught completely off-guard and unsure of how to handle the situation. Her dad, however, didn’t seem to notice, and was instead looking at me.

  ‘Anna!’ he said, voice rough from years of nicotine addiction, ‘I didn’t know you were here!’

  Laura took advantage of the distraction to hide the cigarette box while pretending to be cuddling Max.

  ‘Yeah… we were just heading out though, weren’t we, Lor?’