Free Vengeance Child by Simon Clark Page A

OK?’
    Archer nodded.
    â€˜You see you do it right. If you screw up, I’ll rip your face off and stuff it down your throat.’ With that threat he backed through the basement door, and Archer heard soft footsteps descending.
    Archer noticed drops of his mother’s blood on the floor tiles. These days when she cried she made it silent. Dad didn’t like weeping noises.
    The thuds on the panel grew impatient.
    Archer went to the door. He remembered what his father had instructed. ‘ Go to the door, Archer. Don’t open it. Whatever you do, don’t unlock it. Just shout through that you’re home with your mother but your dad’s out of town. ’
    The thud of fist against wood got louder.
    Archer took a deep breath. Then he unlocked the door and opened it to three men in leather jackets, they had gold rings on every finger. He always remembered those huge gold rings.
    One of the men started to speak. Archer interrupted, ‘He’s down in the cellar. You’ll find him hiding behind the washing machine.’ When they looked at him blankly he added, ‘He made a secret space in the wall behind the washer.’
    For a moment Archer thought he was waking up in bed. He realized he stood in the forest with Jay. He gasped as if in pain.
    Jay’s face held no emotion. ‘You saw your father.’
    â€˜It wasn’t like that,’ Archer protested. ‘I didn’t tell them where he was! He opened the front door and they shot him. I didn’t tell. I didn’t!’ A muscle seemed to tear inside Archer’s chest. The pain freed him from standing there. He fled through the trees. Rabbits scattered in panic. His breathing came in hard, moaning sounds. Something between weeping and angry shouting. All his feelings were mixed up inside. For years he’d genuinely believed he’d seen his father shot on the doorstep of the family home. Now, it had changed. The truth had been revealed to him by Jay. Now he remembered what really happened. His mother had laid on the bed with a bloody nose. The words he’d uttered to the men in their heavy gold rings came back so powerfully they roared inside his head. ‘ He’s down in the cellar. You’ll find him hiding behind the washing machine. ’ What if the men hadn’t shot his father? What would his father have done to him if he had found out that Archer had betrayed him?
    Sunlight falling through the branches dappled the ground. Where now? He was lost in the wood. A breeze moaned through the trees. Timbers creaked. A sound like a coffin lid opening. Oh, how he’d dreamed about that happening. How his father would escape from the cemetery to find him. To get his own back. Archer knew all about his father’s anger. Death wouldn’t be enough to stop it.
    Archer circled a clump of brambles. Then he stopped running. His father stood in the shadows. Archer saw where the bullet had smashed through his cheekbone. The force of the impact had thrust the left eye from the socket so that it hung out to gravely regard the ground. The right eye, however, glared with hatred at Archer.
    His father snarled, ‘You told on me, Archer. I’m going to rip your face off and stuff it down your throat.’
    Then a strange thing happened to the boy. He could still move. Yet his limbs seemed to turn stiff as wood. Although he couldn’t run he turned away from the man with the bullet hole in his face, then he started walking. His rigid legs carried him back into the trees. At that moment he couldn’t shout, or even turn his head to see the monster.
    â€˜Archer . . . stay there . . .’
    Instinct told Archer to keep walking. Even his mind had jammed up now. No thoughts went through his head. Just walk. Maybe everything will turn out well. Footsteps sounded behind him. They grew louder. He reached open ground. A shadow fell on him, a big black stain that spread out on the