"Kid?" I looked up from Tess of the d'Urbervilles which Jo-Jo had given me. I wondered if I had done something wrong since he only ever hovered in my doorway when I had or he wanted something.
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"Yeah?" After a moment of pause he plonked himself down on my bed. He stared at the wall opposite in a melancholy fashion, as if the map of South America I had blue-tacked up was the cause of all human woe.
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"I've got to go out, okay?"
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"Okay." It wasn't something unusual, but he didn't normally tell me. I wasn't a child who needed to be supervised when left home alone.
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"Aaron..." It was odd. Strange. I would have used bizarre had I been entirely sure it was an English word. "When I go I want you to lock the door, put the chain on, shove a chair in front of it and don't open it for anyone, alright?" He still stared at Peru.
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"Uh... Okay. Why? What's going on?" It was a horror movie scene, when the lead actor went out and told the others not to follow. They all did and they all got killed. It wasn't a good scene to be acting out.
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"Just do as I say. Lock the door, keep the curtains pulled and don't turn the lights on. Just stay in here and use a torch or something." This went beyond cheap horror into the good quality alien invasion films when I was destined to be the only survivor whilst the rest of humanity was enslaved.
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"Eric, what's going on?" I flinched when he grabbed me, almost shaking my shoulders but he didn't quite have the balance. His grip was hard though and it only got harder as I tried to pull away.
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"Stay in here. Keep quiet. Don't answer the phone. Don't do anything until I come back."
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"But if I've barricaded myself in, how will I know it's you?" He looked down and sighed, loosening his hands slightly. I couldn't tell if I had pissed him off or just stumped him.
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"I'll call up, keep an ear out. But only answer if it's me." He stared at me for an uncomfortably long time. "You'll be okay, kid."
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"What's happening?" I didn't need to imagine the worst, I just had to remember it. The outside world was dangerous and Eric walked next to the most terrible people there was. "Who's coming?"
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"No one. No one's coming for you. You'll be safe here." No one might be coming for me but that didn't mean no one was after him.
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"But what about you?" He stood up and couldn't stop me from blocking the door, I was faster.
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"I'll be back in the morning. Move, Aaron."
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"Who's fighting?" Suddenly I felt like he had wrapped me up in cotton wool. I hadn't noticed the signs of an impending fight, when they must have been all around us.
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"The less you know the safer you are. Now move." He was too big for me not to move out of his way, he had pushed me aside easily before.
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"Eric, please." I hated my voice for sounding too high and terrified. He didn't answer straight away, instead he reached out and put his arm awkwardly around me.
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"You'll be fine, kid." He hadn't hugged me since I was ten and home from school for the last time, beaten bloody. It was hardly a reassuring gesture eleven years later.
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"What about the bar?" I asked him, hoping to find something normal to wait for rather than the horror film ending.
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"We'll open like normal when I get back." He let go of me and picked up his jacket. As he put it on I saw a bulge in his pocket. He covered it quickly with his hand.
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I couldn't do anything but follow him down the stairs to the front door. He had already pulled in two chairs and had blocked the door that led to the back room of the bar.
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"Just keep quiet, no one can knows this place isn't empty, okay?" I nodded. "I'm proud of you."
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"Please stop talking like you're going to die, it's eerily unnerving." Somehow he gave me a tiny smile. He turned the hall light off, only the glow of the street lights through the front door's glass told me where he was.
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"I had a whole speech planned, childhood memories and grand words and all." The soft punch to my shoulder was more normal than his hug. "I'll be back." He closed the door suddenly so I couldn't ask another question. From the outside he locked it but didn't move away until I put the second lock and the chain on.
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It wasn't until he put his key back through the letter box that it dawned on me he was expecting to have his body searched. Not by police dragging it out of a river but by whoever was out there. My mouth was suddenly filled with acid.
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The Judas let me watch him cross the street to the car that was waiting for him. One of the ones that was identical to a van but with seats, dark black with tinted windows. The streetlight didn't even show the driver through the front windows.
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I waited until Eric was gone before putting the chair against the door and wedging it between the wall and the bottom stair so that someone would have to break the metal legs to open the door. It wasn't enough to make me feel safe. Creeping up and down as quietly as I could I managed to carry another chair from the kitchen down to add to the pile.
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The flat unnervingly dark without a light on. The single room that acted as living room and kitchen seemed enormous, stretching into shadows behind the sofa. The curtains let in a soft orange glow and I didn't dare go near them. I took two kitchen knives, the largest we had and put them on my desk. There was no way I was going to sleep. I wished there was another door at the top of the stairs instead of them leading straight into the living room.
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Directly below my window our bins rattled in the wind and a car drove by. For a full ten minutes I was mature enough not to pull my covers around me, then a second car came this time along the tiny road that passed behind the bar and I crawled into bed, pulling one of the knives closer. I didn't want to put my headphones on in case I missed Eric coming home or someone snuck in. Neither could I risk a light to read by. Instead I just sat there, flinching at every sound the unnaturally loud night was full of.
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The clock in the lounge slowed down compared to my heart beat. Twice I caught myself before I began to hyperventilate.
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There was nothing to think if except wondering what was happening to Eric. I knew we both worked for people you wouldn't want to actually meet. Annabel was nice enough though and I wasn't in the firing line. I stopped breathing for a moment in case I heard gunshots. Eric, well he didn't tell me what he did.
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The last time I checked the clock it was five in the morning, Eric had been gone for four hours. After working all day I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer and I fell asleep without intending to.
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Noises crept into my dream, fuzzy and fading as soon as I opened my eyes. The noise however, was real. A loud and incessant knocking on the door downstairs. I fumbled for the kitchen knife. There was sunlight coming through the gap in the curtains but not enough to see by clearly.
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7:32
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The knocking stopped and I waited, holding my breath until it hurt and I had to cough far too loudly in the silent flat.
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"Aaron!" From the street by my window, where the bins had rattled all night, a voice I didn't recognise yelled repeatedly. I grabbed the other knife as well then dropped them both with a clang as the phone went off. I stared at it but did as Eric had told me to. I pushed the covers away and stood behind the door, knives once again at the ready.
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I was unprepared for the crash that came from the next room. I let out a gasp that would have given me away if not for the noise of breaking glass and voices yelling to each other as what was Eric's window was smashed away. My hands threatened to slip on the knife handles from sweat. I was shaking and my breathing was far too loud for me to have any chance of hiding.
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"Aaron?" The voice was softer now it wasn't yelling and I knew I had heard it before. "Aaron, it's Oscar. I'm not here to hurt you. Please come out." His footsteps closed in on my door. Oscar Fulley wasn't my friend, Eric had told me enough times not to trust the Fulleys. Oscar especially.
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He pushed the door back and I tried to jump out. I was too slow. It took him half a second to wrestle the knives away from me.
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"Aaron! Stop it! It's me! Stop!" They fell to the ground and he pinned my hands by my sides, frowning at me. He looked like shit. "Stop, okay? No one's going to hurt you."
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"Where's Eric?" I spat, trying to sound angry. I didn't, I sounded like I was about to burst into tears.
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"Aaron please, just calm down. We need to get out of here. Okay? Come on." I managed to push him away enough to not have him hold me as I caught my breath. "Aaron."
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"Where's Eric?" I tried to convey that I wouldn't move until he told me just he glaring at him. I was shaking like a mouse so it didn't really work as intended.
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"We need to go." Oscar sighed and looked around, as if expecting someone else to burst in. "I'm sorry, he's not coming back. He's dead."
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I turned away from him, gripping my collar to stop myself from doubling over.
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I had known. All night I had had the sickening thought creeping through my mind. I had known but it still felt like Oscar was twisting my stomach out of me.
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"Aaron, we need to go."
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"Who- what happened?"
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"Someone picked a fight with Finnegan. Now come on." I let him pull me out of my room, almost falling down the stairs. They seemed to jump up at me, deliberately moving away from where my foot was going. The chairs had been cleared away.
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"Jo-Jo," I said as the early morning air made my shiver. "Where's Jo-Jo?" It wasn't Oscar I wanted, it wasn't a Fulley we were meant to rely on.
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"He'll be keeping quiet. We'll find him." I got into the red car with him, still moving slowly.
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It was only as we drove off that I felt something warm on my face. I turned away from Oscar and the mirror so that the woman driving wouldn't notice. I knew I wasn’t that discreet as I wiped my face and tried not to sniff too loudly.
Eric was gone.
I couldn’t process that. He would be there, behind the bar glaring at me, shouting at me, laughing at me and always smiling in the end. He would be standing at the school gates with a bucket of sweets to collect me on my first day. Then again on that rainy Thursday afternoon, sombre faced and quiet. The day I didn’t go home from school because there was no one waiting for me there.
“Aaron…” I didn’t turn around and he gave up. I wasn’t going to talk to him, not in the best of circumstances and there was nothing he could say that was going to help.
I didn’t know where we were going and I didn’t care. Eric had once had an agreement with the Fulleys. How things stood didn’t matter to me just then.
Oscar’s phone rang. I kept my face pressed against the window, intending to wipe it clean before I got out.
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“Right here.” There was a long pause. “I don’t- Theo.” Nothing had changed, I noted sourly. Eric had said it never would. “Okay.” I turned my head a fraction to look at him. “One-Nine-Three Gold Wood Close,” he told the driver. I sank into my seat. I knew the address.
“Annabel.” It was too late to wipe the tear tracks off my face. “Why Annabel?” I didn’t want a job, I didn’t want to be sent around Europe with a bag I couldn’t let anyone open.
“You’re hers.” That made my eyes water again. People like me didn’t count as people to Oscar, not really. I belonged to Annabel. Whoever Eric had belonged to had just gotten him killed. It worked both ways, we did as we were told and in turn we were protected. Eric had chosen the wrong protector.
I thought he would have been smarter than that. Smart enough to live until his heart or any other organ gave out.
. I wiped more tears away.
The car stopped and I was unpleasantly reminded of how close Annabel actually was to the Fountain. She was standing in the open doorway with the door pulled close to her side, ready to slam in anyone’s face. Six foot four, flowing black hair and an intimidating nose she had terrified seven year old me. It wasn’t possible for me to become more scared than I already was.
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“Come in here.” Oscar shadowed me as I walked up the steps to the tall blue townhouse. It loomed over me with the rest of the street, still sleepy and damp from dew. She wrapped an arm around my shoulder. “Thank you, Fulley. I’ll manage from here.” The door was shut firmly in Oscar’s face.
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“Sit him down in here,” her husband Chris’s voice said from the lounge. I was pushed into a sofa that swallowed me up. “Cathy’s getting a room sorted.” There was tea, then there was a hug from Cathy. Sweet little Cathy who shooed her parents out when I started to cry because Annabel wasn’t meant to see me being weak like that.
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“It’ll be okay,” Cathy whispered. “I know that sounds like a lie but it will.” Eric’s voice said the same thing and I thought they were both lying.
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