The Travelling Man (7 page)

“POLICE, THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING!” she bellowed again.

When there was still no answer, she stepped to the locker on the right. She reached out for the catch with her left hand, pulling her right arm that held the revolver closer into her chest. She flipped open the locker and pulled the door towards her just as something leapt from the dark inside. She scrambled against her attacker before realizing that it was a collection of brooms and mops stored in the locker.

She took a deep breath and sighed heavily at the adrenaline making her heart pound hard against her chest. A laugh was brewing up in her throat at her own stupidity when the other locker door opened and this time the shadow that fell onto her was all too human.

She fell backwards as the figure entangled with hers and the gun slipped from her grasp as the heavy and unexpected weight bore down on her. They hit the floor together and she summoned up her not-inconsiderable strength to heave the man off her. He went tumbling to the side and she rolled athletically onto her back and then up to her feet. She stooped down gracefully and swept the revolver into her hand before drawing it up and aiming it at the man on the floor. It was only at this point that she realised that he wasn’t moving. His limbs were still, as was his chest, and as he lay face down, she couldn’t hear him breathing.

She reached out with a foot and nudged him, but he didn’t respond. Now that she looked closely at him she could see that his clothes were filthy and caked in red desert dirt.

“Stand up,” she ordered as she kicked his calf again, but he neither moved nor spoke.

Every instinct told her that this man was dead, but she still kept the gun aimed firmly at the back of his head as she knelt down again. She placed a strong hand under his armpit and pulled him over, quickly standing back up and away.

She looked long and hard at his face before she recognised Davey Mackie. The man that had been missing was now lying dead at her feet, having been stuffed in one of Harlan Harris’ lockers. Davey looked like he had been dragged through town hogtied to the back of a pickup truck. His body was misshapen and his skin looked pale, as though death had taken the man sometime before last night. But the strange thing was that there was what looked like drying blood encrusted on his hands and around his mouth.

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Ellie stared down at the images that she had been drawing for the last few hours now. The charcoal drawn pictures depicted a man being torn apart by a monster of some kind. The setting looked like one of the stores from town, possibly Mr. Harris’. There were shelves stocked with shapes of varying sizes and the floor was darkly colored around the prone figure. She had no idea why she was starting to draw these strange and frightening images. They seemed to flow through her mind, and then the extension of her hand, without her knowledge or consent. She couldn’t help but wonder if her illness was somehow affecting her in ways other than the usual. The chemo had been brutal at times and she had not been sleeping all that well, and now this whole thing was an unwanted addition.

Drawing was always her escape from life when the days were too long or too painful for her to endure. All she had to do was to flip the pad over to a fresh plain sheet of paper and the entire universe became open to her with endless possibilities. She often wondered if one day she could find a way to combine her hobby with a paying job and she had surfed the net on multiple occasions looking for art schools and programs. But all of that was on hold now until she knew what sort of future lay ahead of her.

She knew that her mother was worried about the bills and her health and the last thing that Ellie wanted to do was to add to her worries. She considered herself a mature child, far above her classmates. She knew that the leukemia had forced her to grow up quicker than necessary but she tried not to waste precious time on anger. As far as she was concerned, the whole world had its problems and why should she be any different?

They’d both be too embarrassed to either say it or hear it, but her mother was her hero. The Sheriff was an Amazonian woman, tall and strong, and in Ellie’s eyes akin to Wonder Woman, only with the added benefit of being real. Her mother wore a uniform, carried a badge and a gun, and kept the whole town safe. When her mother told her that everything was going to be okay, she believed her; after all, superheroes never lied.

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Jim Lesnar drove into town that evening, albeit reluctantly. He was loath to leave his domain and step into the world where he had to face the nudges and stares, however imagined. When he was at his mine he was the king of all he surveyed, but on his infrequent trips into Granton he had to endure their false faces and forced smiles because of the size of his wallet.

He was hunched over the wheel of the truck. His body was short and squat and he had to pull the seat as far forward as it would go and he still strained to reach the pedals. His arms were long and thick and were bunched up as his massive black haired hands gripped the steering wheel. He knew that driving would be easier if he just bit the bullet and used a disability enabled vehicle, one without pedals, but he just couldn’t bring himself to admit defeat. The Sheriff had eyed his driving suspiciously on several occasions but she knew and he knew just how important he, or more accurately his mine, was to the town.

The emergency Town Council meeting had been called after Harlan Harris had been found dead in his hardware store earlier that morning. Jim didn’t believe the gossip network that was proclaiming that a psycho serial killer was somehow running amok in Granton. But the council had called the meeting to discuss the best way to reassure the public.

He had phoned the Sheriff’s office earlier in the day only to be told that there was no information or comment to be made at that time. The dispatcher, Jeanne Rainwood, had spoken to him coldly in a manner that had rankled. He was giving serious consideration to making a fuss about her attitude to the council and getting her fired on general principle. His high school lust for the woman ran deep and her aloofness towards him still rankled even after all these years. The word was that she had married one of the typical jocks that girls like her were always attracted to and things had gone bad. It was a small crumb of comfort to him that she had got what she deserved, but a small desperate part of himself still longed to have been her savior. He hated that weakness but he knew that if she ever looked at him twice he would melt like a splat of ice-cream on a hot sidewalk.

He wasn’t shy in throwing his weight around town whenever he felt slighted in any way. The Sheriff was a case in point. He was starting to feel that the tall bitch was starting to get ideas above her station and perhaps needed taking down a peg or two, regardless of her last name. There wasn’t an election scheduled for her post for almost another two years, but the council had discretionary powers to recall her and open up an early election; he just needed a candidate.

They were meeting at Glenn Jordan’s house. He owned the local diner and was one of the more progressive business men about town. He was also an insufferable bore who always seemed to manage to steer the meetings around to his own agenda.

Jordan lived on the other side of town and Jim would often detour around so as to avoid driving through Granton itself. On more than one awkward occasion he had felt himself subjected to the laughs and sly sniggers behind his back as he lumbered across the town square. He had put up with far worse abuse in high school but at least that had been to his face and not behind his broad, but stooped, back.

He pulled up outside Jordan’s house and saw that the other members of the small council were already in attendance. He never knew which was worse - being the first on the scene or the last.

Jordan’s house was a large ranch-like building with a wooden veranda that stretched around the ground floor of the property. The climate lent itself to evenings out on the deck, watching the sun go down on another day. Most of the houses around town were bespoke.

He pulled the expensive truck up out of sight of the main entrance to the house and also hidden from the windows. He knew that they would all be crowding around to get a good look at the freak and he was determined not to give them an eyeful.

Because of his build, he never seemed to fit through a normal opening. To exit the truck he had to use a set of collapsible steps to aid his short legs while squeezing his broad torso and long arms out of the vehicle’s doorway. It was an awkward and uncomfortable task that he chose to perform in private. He had just set his feet upon the rough ground when a voice startled him.

“Good evening,” the pleasant voice sang out.

Jim turned in surprise. One of his compensating gifts for his outward appearance was to possess excellent senses. The man smiled at him from only a few yards away and Jim couldn’t quite believe that the man had snuck up on him so easily and silently.

“Evening,” he grumbled roughly.

“Such a pleasant evening for one’s constitutional, is it not?” the man said with a smile.

Jim had never heard an accent quite like the man’s, having spent almost his entire life in Granton first above and then below ground. “Where you from?” he asked gruffly.

“Do you mean tonight or just in general?”

“You speak funny.”

“It has been said,” the man replied, showing no offence.

“Funny time for a walk. Gets cold out here at night,” Jim said, feeling an odd sensation of friendliness towards the stranger.

“So I’ve heard, Mr. Lesnar, but I must say that I find the chilled air quite bracing.”

“You know me?”

“Doesn’t everyone?”

“Only when they want something,” Jim said bitterly under his breath.

“Ah, the greedy hands are never full are they?”

Jim nodded in agreement, feeling a strange kinship towards the stranger despite them only just meeting in the shadows of the fading day. “And you are?”

“Where are my manners,” the man said, shaking his head. “Age is a cruel mistress that robs one of all common decency. My name is Gilbert Grange. Gilbert if you like. Mr. Grange if you do not.”

Jim felt entranced by the man’s voice and words which seemed to flow like poetry to his dull ears. For the first time in a long time, he was reminded that there was a world outside of the shallow borders of Granton.

“It must be difficult for you?” Grange said as he looked over Jim’s twisted and stunted form with compassion in his eyes.

For some reason Jim did not see the usual sly smirk that colored every conversation in town. This man seemed different; perhaps because he was not one of them, perhaps because he was different in some way.

“It’s not so bad,” Jim said, shrugging his broad shoulders.

“Certainly not when you hold such influence; that must be of some comfort, I’d imagine.”

“Not as much as you’d think,” Jim replied, opening up more to this man in two minutes than he had ever done with anyone else.

“They don’t see you, do they?” Grange sighed, commiserating. “They don’t see what raw power and potential you hold; they don’t see inside your heart, do they? A heart that is filled with such beauty.”

“No,” Jim said in a small choked voice.

“They don’t know that you have love to give, do they? They can’t see beyond the monster that they paint you as. No matter what you do for this town, they will always call you Troll behind your back. You may be king of the trolls, but a troll nevertheless. And how they laugh, Mr. Lesnar; how they laugh when they think that you’re not watching. How they laugh because they believe you to be stupid. But you’re not, are you? You have a keen mind that has stored up their cruelty for all of these years and you are almost ready to show them all, aren’t you, Mr. Lesnar, especially her?”

“Her?”

“Oh yes, there’s always a
her
, Mr. Lesnar. In your case, I’m guessing that it’s the rather comely but shy police dispatcher, Ms Rainwood?”

“Yes,” Jim said quietly but firmly.

“I can help you, Mr. Lesnar. I can help you to show them all.”

“Please,” Jim started to sob quietly. “Please help me.”

“All in good time, my friend, when you are truly ready. Then I can grant you what you most wish in the world.”

“Now, help me now,” Jim demanded impatiently.

“I’m afraid that you are not quite ready,” Grange smiled sadly.

Jim reached out and grabbed the man’s arm with a large hairy paw and clamped down with a vice like grip. “Don’t be like them; don’t be like all of them. Be my friend.”

Grange lifted his eyes from Jim’s grip to his face and stared hard enough to make Jim forget to breathe for a moment. “I suggest that you remove that hand, Mr. Lesnar. Let’s not have any unpleasantness, shall we?”

Jim thought that on the surface he could break the slender old man into pieces over his knee, and yet he suddenly felt scared of the dapper gent. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled as Grange’s eyes turned into jet black pools.

“That’s quite alright, Mr. Lesnar,” Grange said as his eyes started to lighten again. “We shall talk again soon, I promise you, but for now I think that your friends are waiting.

Jim instinctively turned back to Jordan’s house expecting an audience but they were all still inside. When he turned back to Grange, the man simply wasn’t there anymore. He stared down at the desert beneath his feet and saw that there were no tracks. He turned back towards his truck and could clearly see his own leading over, but Grange hadn’t left a mark to indicate that he’d ever been there at all.