The Final Winter

Chapter Nineteen

Jess couldn’t stop worrying about Peter. She also worried about her mum and dad, who would be in turn worrying about her. They were usually still awake now, despite the late hour, finishing off a bottle of wine and arguing. She hoped they were too drunk to notice that she wasn’t home yet, or that the world was slowly being swallowed up by an endless snowstorm. Jess old herself they would be fine, but still she worried about them all the same. Mostly though, right now, she was worried about Peter.

She looked down at her sleeping friend and was surprised to find that his injuries still had the ability to shock her. Peter’s left eye was caked in a thick veneer of canary-yellow, custardy puss. It wasn’t what disturbed her most however; it was the deep carvings sliced into his clammy flesh. Send out the sinner.

Whatever it meant, it was the work of sickos, for sure. Peter never did anything to hurt anyone. He was sweet and gentle, probably the nicest boy she’d ever known. Not like the usual football-obsessed dickheads she usually met online. She looked down at Peter’s gore-crusted face and saw that, despite the blood, she could still make out his gentle features and soft lips. Before tonight, she had sometimes thought about what it would be like to kiss them. She wondered if he’d ever thought about kissing her too.

Bloody Hell, Jess! Peter’s lying here, dying, and you’re thinking about making out with him. Jeez!

At that moment, Peter opened his eye. Jess didn’t notice at first, but when he started to moan it startled her. He continued moaning until the strangled noises eventually began to form words. “Jess… ica.”

Jess nodded and smiled, tears gushing down her cheeks. “Yes, yes, it’s me. I was so worried about you, Peter. What on Earth happened to you?”

Peter focused intensely on her for a moment, lips puckering as if preparing for some great speech. She hoped it wasn’t going to be a final one. “Jessica…” he grimaced, “listen… to me.”

She put a hand against his cheek. It throbbed heat like a radiator. “I am, Peter. I’m here.”

“Get away,” he said, “out of here.”

Jess blinked. “What do you mean?”

A hiss of air whistled in Peter’s nostrils as though forcing its way past a blockage. He repeated himself, but more weakly, like he was going to lose consciousness again at any moment. “Get away. They are… coming.”

Peter’s good eye rolled back in his head and then disappeared behind his drooping eyelid. He was gone again. Maybe forever, Jess contemplated sadly. Before she had time to consider what Peter had been trying to tell her, she was alerted by a crash.

Followed by cries of pain; screams of agony.

What is happening now? I don’t think I can take any more.

Jess felt numb and moved sluggishly. Making her way over to the bar area, she could see that a commotion had already begun to take place. Harry, Damien, and the old man were missing, but Lucas, Steph, and Nigel were milling around the bar looking concerned. She searched for Jerry and found him on his own, sitting at a table in the corner. He was shivering and didn’t seem to be paying much attention to anything that was going on. She made a mental-note to check up on him later. Kath sat nearby too, also seemingly uninterested in anything that was going on. When Jess reached the bar she found herself face to face with Lucas, who was making his way through the bar hatch to the staff side. He stopped when he saw her.

“What’s going on?” she asked him.

“Dunno, lass. The menfolk went downstairs to get us something for a fire. Next thing we know there’s a load of caterwauling.” Lucas moved into the doorway behind the serving area that led into the back of the pub, leaving the candlelight of the bar and fading into the shadows. Before disappearing completely, he turned back to her. “You coming or not, lass?”

Jess stood for a moment then nodded. She followed after Lucas into the unlit corridor, groping against the wall to keep herself steady. Further on down, the sounds of someone in pain became clearer, and so did other sounds… people bickering. It sounded like Harry and Damien. She hoped everyone was alright, but worried that Damien had lashed out and hurt somebody; broken Harry’s nose or worse?

Lucas sparked his lighter and the corridor lit up in a flood around them. He reached out to stop Jess before she bumped into him. “I think they’re down there,” he said.

To their left was an open doorway leading to a narrow staircase. A breeze seemed to wisp up from the cellar and tickle Jess’s cheeks and the inside of her nostrils.

Lucas placed his hands either side of his mouth and shouted down the stairs. “You fellas okay down there? We heard yelling.”

After a few seconds a voice that Jess recognised as Harry’s floated up the stairs. “We need help. Graham is hurt. It was my fau-“

“Just get some light down here and some blankets.” The new voice was Damien’s, cutting off Harry mid-sentence. “We’ve had a slight fuck-up but everything’s going to be sound.”

Jess couldn’t help feeling that things were most definitely not going to be ‘sound’. Peter was on death’s door and now the old man was injured.

Two down… How many more to go?

Jess gut told her they were all in for a long night and that their troubles were not yet over.

Not by a long shot.

Kath almost felt bad.

Almost.

It had, after all, been Peter’s decision to run off to look for the stupid girl; no one had made him do it. Ironically, Kath was the one who ended up finding Jess anyway, and that had just proved even more how idiotic the boy was for not listening to her. Still, she couldn’t help but ruminate about what had happened.

Someone messed him up real good. Probably crossed the wrong people; Polish Mafia or something. Kath suddenly had another thought: Or there really is a psychopath stalking us all?

If there was a sadistic madman running amok out there, was she going to be safe here in the pub? It didn’t feel like it. The Trumpet was full of degenerates from what she’d seen so far.

You had Lucas, prancing around like a drunken leprechaun; Nigel, an ugly man that lacked any personality she could discern of; Steph, a low-class tramp; and that insufferable girl, Jess. Of all the people Kath could be trapped with, Jess would have been last on her handwritten list. Her little buddy from the video shop was no less irritating, backing up her absurd stories just so he could get into her filthy knickers – if the slut even wears any. Next was Damien, a walking billboard for dysfunctional youth and petty crime. Finally, you had the pensioner, stinking of piss and beer, and the alcoholic loser, Harry. She could tell Harry was a drunk because he had that same weathered look on his face that her father used to have. A slow, draining sickness that killed a man one drink at a time; made him neglect everything important.

Maybe if Kath’s father hadn’t been such a deadbeat she could have finished her History degree and actually done something with her life. Instead she ended up supporting him until she hit twenty-eight. The day she found her father lying on the floor, fading from a heart attack had been a turning point for her. The thought of him pleading with her to call for help, while she stood there shaking her head and watching him die, was significant to her. It was the day she decided she would no longer let anyone take advantage of her. She would look out only for herself from then on. Selfish, lazy drunks like Harry could go right to Hell.

All around Kath, the degenerates scuttled around like displaced ants, clutching blankets and bottles of water, carrying them in a line. Something was happening in one of the backrooms of the pub, but Kath couldn’t say she really cared. She was only with these people for safety, and the last thing she wanted was to be involved with them beyond that.

Maybe the thug has finally thrown a punch at the drunk, she thought. Punch drunk!

She laughed out loud, but secretly hoped that harmless bickering was all that was happening in the back, but when she thought again about who had thrown Peter through the window, and why, she started to worry that there was far more danger lurking in the air tonight than a simple punch up.

“Well,” she said out loud. “I’d best go see what those idiots have gotten themselves into.”

Kath stood up and headed for the darkness of the corridor.