Darkmans. Nicola Barker
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flame cut out.
A man.
There was a man.
There was a man at the window, gazing in at them. And he was perched on a horse; an old, piebald mare (the horse wore no saddle, no reins, but he sat astride her – holding on to her mane – with absolute confidence). He was a strange man; had a long, lean, pale-looking face underpinned by a considerable jaw, grey with stubble; a mean mouth, sharp, dark eyes, thick, brown brows but no other hair to speak of. His head was cleanly shaven. He was handsome – vital, even – but with a distinctly delinquent air. He was wearing something strangely unfeasible in a bright yellow (a colour of such phenomenal intensity it’d cheerfully take the shine off a prize canary).
The window was horse-high, only; its torso banged against the glass, steaming it over – so the man leaned down low to peek in, as if peering into the tank of an aquarium (or a display cabinet in a museum). Kane couldn’t tell – at first – what exactly it was that he was looking for, but he seemed absolutely enthralled by what he saw (seemed to take delight in things – like a child – quite readily). He was smiling (although not in an entirely child-like way), and when his eyes alighted upon Kane, the smile expanded, exponentially (small, neat, yellowed teeth, a touch of tongue). He reached out a hand and beckoned towards him –
Come
Kane dropped his lighter.
As the lighter hit the table-top Beede turned himself and followed the line of Kane’s gaze. His own eyes widened.
The horseman kicked at the mare’s flanks and pulled away. There was a thud of hooves on soil (God only knows what havoc he’d wreaked on the spring flower display in the bed below the window) and then a subsequent musket-clatter on the tarmac.
Kane shoved back his chair and stood up. ‘Is the fucking carnival in town or what?’ he asked (noticing the quick pump of his heart, the sharp flow of his breath). He’d barely finished speaking (was about half-way to the window to try and see more) when a woman walked into the room. She was holding on to the hand of a small boy. She appeared to be searching for someone.
This time it was Beede’s turn to spring to his feet. The book on his lap fell to the floor. Kane spun around to the sound of its falling. ‘Elen!‘ Beede exclaimed, his face flushing slightly.
The woman did not acknowledge him at first. She merely paused, glanced from Beede to Kane, then back again, her expression barely altering (it remained bright and calm and untroubled. Almost serene). Kane saw that she had a large birthmark – a brown mole – in the curve of her nose, just to the right of her left eye, but it disappeared from view as a sheet of long, dark hair slipped out from behind her ear.
‘Did Isidore bring you here?’ Beede asked, trying (and almost succeeding) to sound less emotionally involved than before. She looked a little surprised as she pushed back her hair. ‘Of course not,’ her lips pursed together in a brief pucker of concern, ‘he’s at work today.’
She had a soft voice. The accent wasn’t Ashford but it was too vague for Kane to place it. As she spoke she released the boy’s hand. The boy walked straight past Kane and over to the window, but instead of looking through it (he was a little short for this, anyhow), he turned, shoved his back against the wall, and pulled the curtain across the top half of his body (thereby casually obscuring what remained of Kane’s view). Kane scowled (only the bottom half of the boy’s torso was now visible), glancing from the curtain and back to Beede again. ‘Did you see that creature out there?’ he asked, his head still full of what’d happened before.
‘This is my son, Kane,’ Beede murmured to the woman, in a light, almost excessively straightforward way.
The woman nodded at Kane. She smiled slightly. She was very lean. Her clothes were long and hippyish, but dark and plain and clean.
‘Elen is my chiropodist,’ Beede explained.
‘Hi,’ Kane muttered, glancing distractedly towards the window again, focussing in on the boy, who – quiet as he remained – was rather difficult to ignore.
‘Fleet,’ the woman said – her voice mild but authoritative – ‘please come away from there.’
‘I owed Elen some money,’ Beede continued (almost to thin air). He put his hand to his pocket, then thought better of it and leaned down to pick up his bag from the floor.
Kane noticed how he pronounced her name – not Ellen, but E-len – as if the ‘l’ had quite bewitched his tongue.
The boy ducked out from under the curtain (leaving it drawn), walked back over to his mother and stood at her side. He was small and wild-looking (four years old? five?); an imp; round-faced and wide-lipped, with pale skin, brown freckles and black hair. He stared at Kane, unblinking. Then he smiled. He had no front teeth.
‘We were waiting in the bar area,’ the woman said, glancing for a moment towards the window herself (as if sensing Kane’s preoccupation with it). ‘Fleet found a counter on the floor and put it into one of the machines. He won some money.’
The boy jiggled his hands around in his pockets and gurgled, delightedly.
‘The barman said he was underage…’
‘He is,’ Beede interrupted.
Kane rolled his eyes, then displaced his irritation by taking out his phone and checking his texts again. The woman observed Kane’s irritation, but showed no reaction to it.
‘He gave me all of these,’ Fleet interjected, pulling several packets of complimentary matches from his pockets, laughing and rotating on the spot, his face turned up to the ceiling, the matches clutched tightly to his chest. His mother put out her hand to steady him. ‘He builds things with them,’ she explained.
Outside the horse was still vaguely audible as it moved around in the car park. While Beede continued to search through his bag, Kane strolled over to the window, pulled the curtain back and peered out. The horse was visible, but way off to his left. It had come to a halt in the children’s play area, where it stood, breathing heavily and defecating. The man was now struggling to climb off its back. But it was an entirely different man.
Kane blinked.
Entirely different. Tall. Nordic. Smartly dressed in some kind of uniform –
Imposter
He pushed his palms up against the glass and looked around for the canary-coated stranger, but nobody else was visible out there.
‘How strange,’ he said, turning just in time to see Beede’s hand withdrawing from the woman’s hand (he had passed her an envelope. She placed it into her bag, her eyes meeting Kane’s, calmly).
‘What is?’ Beede asked.
‘The man who peered in through the window a moment ago. The man on the horse. He’s changed.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘He had a shaved head and a thin face. He was dressed in yellow.’
The boy suddenly stopped revolving. He grabbed on to his mother’s skirts. ‘Oh dear,’ he whispered, then pushed his face deep into the fabric and kept it hidden there.
The child was definitely beginning to work on Kane’s nerves.
Beede was staring at Kane, but his expression was unreadable (was it disbelief? Was it irritation? Anger? What was it?) The woman merely stared at the ground, frowning, as if carefully considering something.
‘Did you see him?’ Kane asked again.
‘Uh…no. No. And I’m late – work. I’d better head off.’ Beede spoke abruptly. He touched the woman’s sleeve (she smiled), ruffled the boy’s hair (the boy released his mother’s skirt and gazed up at him), slung his bag over