He Runs (Part One) Read Online Free PDF Page A

face wrinkled and her mouth contorted as he attempted to plunge in spoon after spoon of mushed veg, most of it ending up on the floor.
    Man holds his mug up, says ‘cheers’ to the little girl and drinks the purple wine. He hopes that like the dog, the child will relent. She’s young enough to be moulded into something else, young enough to forget about the warmth of her mother and father’s love. Man searched high and low to find a name for her but to no avail. A new life, a new name. That’s how it goes.
    ‘Emma,’ says Man, directing the suggestion at Hound. ‘What do you reckon?’ The dog is sat patiently, his mangy paw held out, begging for some beef. Man obliges him, watches the dog’s black eyes glow as meat enters his mouth.
    ‘Emma is nice. My girl was called Emma. I never told you that, did I?’ The dog looks up, mouth wet with saliva, the patched paw rising again. ‘I keep forgetting that we don’t know each other very well. Emma it is, though.’
    Man turns to the infant, the newly christened Emma and she cries even louder.
    ‘Don’t think she’s a fan,’ Man says to Hound.
    The dog growls lowly, a reminder that he is after some more beef.
    ‘Okay, okay, you’re lucky I heard you with all that noise over there.’
    And Emma cries.
     
                                *********************
     
    Standing over Emma’s cot, Man smiles. He’s watching her sleep, her tiny ribcage rising and falling with each breath.
    She cried herself to sleep. An old trick that Man’s used before. They all get tired eventually.
    Emma’s room is large for a girl of her age. It is dust covered and the floor is strewn with battered toys. The window is boarded up, only the tiniest sliver of light squeezes its way in. Looking at the state of this room Man is of the opinion that Emma used to sleep with her parents.
    Man slept in the master bedroom, the one belonging to Daniel and Celeste. It took him a few hours to settle, to get used to the bouncing embrace of the mattress, but then sleep took him and he dreamed, an alternate world where everything is safe and beautiful and painless. He dreamed of Claire and Emma, living together as a happy family in the farmhouse, untouched by the outside world, their own paradise to lap up. In his dream they spent their days going for long walks and playing in flower-littered fields and feeding the cows and swimming in rivers and chasing lambs. Indeed, the dream was so vivid and brilliant that when he woke he cried out for them, expecting to see them in bed with him. Then the realisation of reality set in, the ominous cloud that lingers over him every day.
    Emma’s lips quiver as air is pushed out from her mouth. Man giggles at how absurd they look and also at how cute she is. He sips at some coffee he’s made, a cocktail of boiled rainwater and some instant coffee that is a year past its best before date. Still tastes good to Man. It’s been too long since he’s experienced the sort of comforts that this rustic, beaten up farm house provides.
    A cold air forms in his gut at the realisation of this acquisition, picks up momentum and swirls like a hurricane; killing Emma’s parents was an act of preservation, nothing new to Man. But now, in the midst of the reward that their murder yielded, he can feel the gut wrenching vortex in his abdomen. And then underneath that, like a tiny sun, rutilant and warm, he can feel the thrill of relief.
    ‘Eggs,’ he says to himself. ‘Maybe the chickens will have laid some for me.’
    As he moves along the landing, the glow of sunlight fills the space around him and he begins to take everything in. His environment, his inherited home. He’d been so tired, so keen to rest that he’d just accepted, with open arms, the gift of shelter.
    Next door to the baby’s room is the master bedroom where he slept. It is large and spacious, with an antique four-poster bed dominating the centre of the room. The view from the window