Patrick Kruth - Issue 36

Patrick Kruth is an Irish writer whose work has appeared in Sonder Magazine and Hypertext Magazine. When not writing fiction he works as a newspaper reporter covering everything from crime to politics. His fiction is often characterised by dark, language-driven narratives that explore the lives of ordinary people, with a particular focus on rural settings and the quiet tensions that shape them.  

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FLANKED BY DARKNESS

He was conscious of scraps of conversation, soft whispers that held their tenor only long enough to reach his ears. He was unsure if he was dreaming as a comfortable haze filled his head. For a few seconds, he wasn’t thinking but just was. Scented air looped down from the opened window and petted his face as he lay cocooned next to her. 

He opened his eyes and stared into the darkness. The world pulled into focus, bringing the realisation that he shouldn’t be hearing voices. Whispered fragments became conspiracies in the full gleam of his consciousness. He lay frozen with a primordial foreboding, aware that he would have to investigate.  

Objects coalesced out of the darkness as his eyes adjusted to the pale gloom. The floor was cold. The prong of his belt tinkled against its frame as he took his jeans off the dresser. His lumbering, exaggerated movements made him look like a mime as he staggered into them, the residue of a dream still clouding his thoughts. Was it something about a rabbit? He grabbed his work boots and a flannel shirt from the dresser and stumbled out the bedroom door.  

The hallway was cold also. He moved past the girls’ bedroom trying not to step on the loose floorboard, but failed. It wheezed under him with a groan. He opened the kitchen door, turned on the lights, rubbed his eyes and cleared his throat. After stuffing his sockless feet into his work boots, he pulled on his shirt, breathing in the acrid smell of mixing oil and hedge cuttings. He fumbled about under the sink for the flashlight, flicked the switch and breathed a sigh of relief.  

Then he remembered the keys sitting on his bedside table and went back down the hall, successful in avoiding the plank this time, and grasped the bunch in a tight grip. The snippets of conversation still trickled through the window and frightened him more now he was fully awake. The garbled intonations sounded as if they were coming from a blanket covered radio in the backfield. He looked out the black window into the garden but could see nothing except his own ghostlike reflection staring back. A flash of cowardice surged into his mind as he looked at her in the bed and thought about waking her, and he wished he could just pretend he wasn’t hearing it and get back in. He reached underneath the bed and patted around and found the old pickaxe handle and quietly pulled it out, bringing with it long strands of dust covered spiders’ web that hung floating in dreamy wisps. 

He closed the back door and stood listening. The rise and fall of car engines and the pneumatic thuds coming from the cannery in the far distance were all he could hear now. A curtain of cloud drew across the sky, covering moon and stars. The security light shot on as he stepped off the back step. A cascade of amber coursed halfway up the garden, expelling the gloom and leaving a runway. A moth flitted over his head and fluttered in the harsh glare. The ditch a couple of hundred yards away wasn’t showing any signs of life. Then he heard the slap of the dog’s box and saw his white Labrador Scruffy waddle up to greet him. He gave him a welcoming stroke with the flashlight and called him a “deaf fucker” and listened. The voices had ceased. Had they seen the light? He started walking up the illuminated grass flanked by darkness. At the edge of the beam the dark softened. He stopped and hunkered down scarcely breathing, and waited there with Scruffy nuzzling under his arm until the light clicked off, allowing the night to close back in.   

A few minutes had passed. A hollow woody coo came through the air. He thought it was a dove but couldn’t be sure. A stream of dappled light flooded through the hedge sweeping across his face, dazzling him. Penetrating him. For a moment he stood stock-still. Transfixed and unable to think. He burrowed the heel of his palms into his stinging eyes, removing them in time to watch the beam continue along the right side of the field and rise shooting into the sky hovering at an angle like a leaning tower of gold.   

They were lamping. Looking for rabbits, stunning them with high powered torches and then setting lurchers on them. It was illegal but tolerated. It was also a great excuse to have if caught casing houses. The beam had startled Scruffy too, but he’d regained himself and started up with hoarse throaty barks interspersed with shrill whines. He was old, and it took an effort to do even this. He shambled up to the hedge and began flicking back his hind legs, sending little tufts of grass into the air with his head raised, baying at the moon as if attempting to expel it from the sky. The same primaeval instinct was gnawing at both of them- Beware the movement in the shadows beyond the glow of the campfire. High-pitched squeals came from the other side of the ditch just as the beam of light dissolved into the darkness followed by terse breathy calls of “C’mon.” It was time to let himself be known. He piped up with a forceful, “What is it Scruff? Gowan, good boy.” The contrived encouragement spurred the dog on, safe in the knowledge this was one of these times he wouldn’t be shouted at for barking during the night.  He switched on the flashlight and shone it through the ditch moving it back and forth, unsure if it was having any material effect on the other side of the hedge.   

A door slammed, an engine revved, and tyres mashed the tarmac of the road. He listened to the whirl of the engine and followed it, jumping onto a pile of firewood in the corner of the garden. They turned left, easing around the corner at the crossroads. The rays of the headlights cut through the air like two swords slicing through the darkness. They were coming to his gate. He stiffened at this realisation, gripping the pickaxe handle tighter. His whole body screwed up. His stomach churned. But the engine didn’t let up, and they cruised past innocuously semi-visible through the slats in the gate. He could make out it was a small van, possibly white or grey, but he couldn’t be sure.  

Relief swept over him as the sound of the engine faded. The entire ordeal felt like a violation. The relief quickly subsided as indignation swelled up inside him. How dare they think they could come around here doing that to decent people. He was ashamed to have been scared like that. 

Who’s to say they weren’t casing the place anyway? he thought. 

He considered phoning the Guards. But they’d be long gone by the time they came.   

“Fuck it,” he said out loud.  

He jogged back down the garden to the back door. The security light clicked and sent out another shaft. He pulled the keys from the door and opened the electric gates with the attached fob. The mechanical arm edged out with the motor stiffly trundling into life. He threw the pickaxe handle into the footwell, swung the car with a squeal, grabbed the clutch low, drove over the threshold and rolled down both front windows.  He flicked on the interior lights and looked in his rear mirror. His eyes seemed to plead with him not to go, as if it wasn’t him. He pulled out to the left, and it was only then that he glimpsed Scruffy in his rearview, bathed in the glow of the security light. He’d just have to hope he wouldn’t follow him. 

They’d gotten a minute, maybe a minute and a half head start. The road was less than three miles long before it came to a junction. He knew he’d have to gun it, and he did.  

Spectral trees flitted past before slipping back into the shadows behind, their leaves trembling as if they were stirring from sleep. Dimly lit houses spilt out their light and reared up out of the night before receding in a blurred peripheral flicker. The gears ground as he mistimed a change. He was climbing a hill bend and came over the crest glimpsing pulsing hazard lights winking red pools of light onto the tarmac up ahead as if conjuring two portals from hell. The van was parked in the gateway of a field on the crest of the next hill, framed darkly yet distinctly defined against the pale black sky. The car felt like it was about to bounce off its chassis as it topped the hill at speed sending a streak of light across the van. He was afraid he’d climb only to see it had disappeared. But it hadn’t.   

Two pale figures stood conversing over the roof as he crawled up behind it. The one on the driver’s side pointed his finger at the other as if  emphasising a particularly pressing point. The hot white glare of the headlights reflecting off the white metallic revealed a young man with sandy messy hair that duck tailed over his ears and a stubble beard that failed to hide his youthfulness. The other was much fatter. He was clean shaven with eyes that looked as if they had been underlined with charcoal. He looked old enough to be his father and judging by the similarities probably was. 

 They stood for a moment regarding him, and he them. At length, he cranked down his window and craned out his head leaving the car idling. The younger one greeted him in a strong vowel rich Northern Irish drawl.   

“Howya doin?”   

“Lads ye’re out shockin late.”  

“Aw, we’re just doin a bitta lamping.”  

“There’s a brave few houses round here lads and there’ve been break-ins last few weeks.”  

“Awww naw, honest, honest look, we’ve the dawgs in the back and all.” He swung open the door and gestured inside to the back. Two whippets, one brindle coloured the other grey tried to leap out and whined as he blocked them with his body.  

The hazard lights ticked malevolently in the silence.  

“Aye, right.” He was trying to strain his neck to see if he could read the number plate, but it was caked with dust and the man’s leg was obscuring it.  

“You’d just want to watch yourselves; people might get the wrong idea.” He cringed at this wooden action film threat. Neither of them said anything. He wondered if he’d even said it as he heard it or if it’d come out in a cracked squeak and they hadn’t heard it at all. The younger one leaned back on the doors with his arms folded. The older stayed leaning over the roof, staring at him. 

To his surprise, he realised he had nothing else to say. He couldn’t actually do anything. He judged it better not to mention the Guards. It seemed like a terrible anti-climax, one that was growing more awkward the longer they stayed there in silence. He suddenly grew afraid of their reply and what it might be, they might not take well to a threat however empty it was.  Not giving them further time to answer he pulled the car to the right driving on down the road still unsure whether he believed them but hoping they had been deterred if they were up to no good and reproaching himself for not thinking and putting himself in that situation. He watched in his mirrors as they turned around and stared after his car. He had seen their faces now, and they’d surely move on. After reversing in a gateway further up, he drove towards home and met them as they were pulling out and slackened his speed. He didn’t give any acknowledgement trying to see the front number plate out of the corner of his eye but finding it shrouded in a veil of light from the headlights. They topped the hill as he turned the corner and the shadows took them. The older one had said nothing, and that disturbed him.     

The gates rattled open, he parked and got out. When he got inside, he locked the front door and stood in the kitchen waiting to hear the reassuring silence. Impish giggles came from down the hall, he smiled to himself and walked down to his room. She was sitting up in the bed giving him a knowing smile darting her eyes at the two humps in the duvet either side of her.   

“Awwwww, I can’t wait to get into bed,” he declared with faux enthusiasm and an exaggerated yawn as he took off his jeans and kicked off his boots. 

The two humps quivered, and he heard stifled laughter.  With a dramatic flourish he whipped off the coverings and they both jumped up with an Arrrrrrghhhhh!  He leapt backwards, feigning surprise as two little blonde figures burst forth gurning and gnashing.  

“You little divils,” he shouted, launching himself onto the bed in a tickling frenzy. 

“We’ve a couple of stowaways tonight,” she said, throwing the blankets back over the three of them ad he righted himself.  

“Daddy, why were you outside?”  

“Poor old Scruffy was barking at his shadow again. I just wanted to make sure he was alright.”  

“Was he?”  

“He was grand pet, everything’s grand,” he said, flipping back the corner and sliding into bed, scooching them along.  

The warmth was so inviting he pulled the duvet up to his neck. His wife’s moisturiser and the faint whiff of talcum powder from the girls made the room smell of flowers. They were giggling anew, at some in-joke.  

“You monkeys better not spend the whole night laughing,” he said kindly.  

It took them a while to settle and overcome the novelty of being up so late. They played and joked, spending all their giddy energy. The youngest drifted off leaning her head on his shoulder. His wife had slipped off with her arm around the eldest. He lay there awake listening to their noises and smelling their scent and trying not to think.    

Eventually, he dozed, enjoying letting all his thoughts, and the events of the night pour out of his mind until he came to the edge of sleep. His only concentration now was on the somnolent breathing of his girls.   

The loose floorboard creaked, pulling him up from the depths of sleep and flooding his mind with three exponentially worrying questions. 

Had he heard two voices or three? 

Did he lock the door when he set off in pursuit?

 Had he taken the pickaxe handle back in with him?