Mandy’s mobile rang. It was Philip.
“Mandy? Have you seen Matilda? She’s gone.”
He sounded panicky. You would have thought he’d have been glad to be shot of her!
“What am I?” she asked. “Her fucking baby-sitter?”
“You two spent the whole day together yesterday, and now she’s gone. I’m not stupid. What have you done with her? We’re supposed to be getting married tomorrow!”
“I’m doing you a favour,” she snapped, and hung up on him.
The phone rang again.
“What’s going on?”
She hung up again, and turned the mobile off. He was going to be seriously pissed off at her, she knew. Tough fucking titty. He deserved everything he got. He’d dumped her for the Elephant Man’s ugly sister. It was he who should be apologising to her.
She had tried to follow Matilda down the street, but the troll had been better at keeping to the shadows than she had given herself credit for. It was probably inherited, passed down from one freaky generation to the next without them even knowing it. She had narrowed it down to one street, so she had parked the car halfway down it so she could keep an eye out for any signs of life. Matilda was in one of these houses, and she would be rich if she could work out which of them it was.
She had offered to sell Matilda to Crow, but he wasn’t interested. “I know where she is already,” he’d said. “I’m not paying you for information I already have, Missy!” That fucking “Missy” word again! “What I want is the whole family. Talk to her. Gain her trust. Find out where they’re all holed up, and you’ll have a small fortune. You could buy yourself something pretty.”
Patronising bastard, she thought, her fingers digging into the steering wheel. “Buy yourself something pretty” in-fucking-deed! Okay, as it happened, she probably would – she’d dreamed of buying a walk-in wardrobe full of Christian Louboutins for as long as she could remember - but there was no need for him to talk fucking down to her!
She flicked the radio off to concentrate better. Where was that big fucking moose? She would have to come out of one of the doors in the street, and when she did Mandy could buy all the shoes she wanted, with matching handbags too!
#
Matilda inched along the hallway whilst her eyes gradually became re-accustomed to the darkness. She could still hear the breathing – panting, she should say – from the room at the end of the passageway. She honed in on it. She prayed it was Vincent. She hated the thought that he might be in pain, but it was better that than if he was dead.
Something stirred in Daddy’s room as she felt her way past it. Not Daddy; there was no doubt at all that he was dead. But one of the Family, no doubt. They would all be awake now, they did all of their sleeping during the day, when it was too light to go in search of meat. Her only hope was that they were out, or that they were busy, or both. If they found her here, she would be finished. Nowhere to hide, no hope of fighting them off, only Mandy for back-up (and she would never let her new friend risk her life in a futile attempt to save her). Discovery meant death.
She stopped outside Daddy’s room, willing whatever was inside to settle back down. Again, she felt the urge to run, to get as far away from this place as she could. But she resisted. She had to know if Vincent was here. And she had to save him if he was.
Movement again, stopping and starting and finally stopping again. She waited for two or three minutes and then pushed ahead towards the end of the hallway, towards Vincent or oblivion.
It took her a full ten minutes to inch her way along the rest of the passageway. Eventually, she came to a halt outside the far door. This was the same room from which she and Philip had made their escape. How ironic if there were Family in here, ready to pull her to pieces the moment she stepped inside.
Another deep breath, and then she pushed the door open. If anything, it was even darker in here, and the stench of excrement was definitely worse.
“Vincent?” she whispered, praying to she knew not whom that it would be her brother who answered her. The panting seemed to get louder in response, as if coming from every corner of the room, disorientating her in the darkness. Her senses reeled as the panting, the smell, the all-consuming blackness overwhelmed her. She felt faint. It was all too much. She couldn’t do this. She should go. This was not Vincent, she’d know if it was.
But despite everything, she had to be sure. Fighting back the panic which choked at her throat, she willed her heavy legs to take her over to the black-out curtains. She touched bare wall first. She had lived here forever, how could she not know where the curtains were? She fumbled in one direction, and then the other, and heaved an audible sigh of relief when her fingers closed round the thick and filthy material. What was the point in sighing quietly when someone was panting so loudly just a couple of yards away?
She pulled back the curtain a few inches. She could see Mandy’s car right outside, but her friend had not seen her; she was holding something to her ear and talking into it. No help there. She had to deal with this alone.
She turned to see what was sharing the room with her.
She was right. It was not Vincent.
The creature was staring at her. A man. Naked and chained. Terrified. A Wedding Feast, just like Philip.
She took a step forward, wanting to free him. Just that, nothing more. She had her Outsider, she neither needed nor desired another one. But she couldn’t just leave him there. She was as much a part of his world now as the one she had previously inhabited, (yet at the same time she knew she would never really be fully part of either). She would set him free, and find her brother.
It was then that her plans were shattered. As she took a step towards him, he screamed, rattling his chains in panic as he tried in vain to flee from her. Doors opened in the passageway outside. Hurried footsteps approached.
And then they all came in, cornering her, cutting off all hope of escape.
#
Mandy saw a front door open. Just by a foot or two, and then it was closed again. Something had just crept inside. She hadn’t seen anything go in, but they were good at skulking around, these trolls. And if it was indeed one of them, she could go shoe-shopping on Monday!
She got out the car and scuttled forwards, bending at the waist to keep low. She wasn’t sure why, but they always did it on telly, so it must be the sensible thing to do.
She stood outside the house. What now? She wasn’t going inside, that would be fucking suicidal! She would just peek through the curtains, checking that whatever was there looked like it should be chasing Billy Goats Gruff across bridges, and sod-off to collect her reward. If it meant that Matilda would end up captured and dissected while still alive, then so much the fucking better.
The house was in darkness. Try as she might, she could find no way to peer past the curtains. They were drawn tighter than a gnat’s chuff. She could try the back garden (or the back yard, whatever these people had back there), but felt a lot happier doing this under the street lights, where she felt safe. She would have to try looking through the letter-box, and hope for the best.
She flipped the letter-box open, but her view was obscured by a row of brush-like bristles. Fuck knows what they were for! Insulation maybe, or perhaps to stop people like her spying on the people inside. She slid her fingers into the letter box to push the bristles aside. There was another row of the bastards further back! She had lovely slim hands though (if she said so herself), slim enough to slide right through the letter-box and push the second set of bristles apart too.
She peered in, using both hands to hold the letter box open and keep the bristles apart, giving her a fair view of the passageway inside. She thought she heard a noise on the other side of the door, a sound like slippers on carpet (not that trolls wear slippers). There was a light on upstairs, which cast just enough light into the hallway for her to check it out. A coat on the bannister, a dusty old –
That noise again, closer than before. If whatever it was would take just one more step forward, she could get a good look at it, and would be on her way to Crow before you could say Jack-fucking-Robinson.
She screamed. It had her fingers! It was tugging on them, trying to pull her hands into the letter-box. She couldn’t break free. It was going to eat her hands, or hold her there until someone else came to bundle her inside! Why had she come here? Why had she risked her life for a few pairs of shoes?
She tried to scream, but nothing came out. Her wrists raked painfully against the letter-box as the thing inside tugged her further and further towards it.
Mercifully, she blacked out.
#
The Wedding Feast gibbered in fright as the Family filed into the room.
Vincent came first, bruised and battered, but still very much alive. Behind him followed the women-folk – Mummy included – and a handful of children, blinking furiously in the weak street-light which filtered past the curtain which she had not fully closed. It was the first time they had encountered light in their short unhappy lives.
“Vincent!” she cried, hugging him. He hugged her back, ignoring the pain from hands which oozed infection.
The others crowded around her: mothers, aunts, nephews, nieces. She had expected them to rip her to pieces, but they were all over her like toddlers round a puppy, Mummy in particular. It was only then that she realised how much she had missed them all. Maybe deep down she was still part Family after all.
“Tilly, you’ve got to go,” Vincent urged. “They’ll be back any minute. ALL of them.”
“They’re out foraging,” Mummy explained. “Angela’s getting married tomorrow. We had to put her wedding back after you ran off with her Wedding Feast! We’ve got another one now though, and we’ve all been so miserable this week, what with you gone and Daddy missing, that Uncle said we could have two Feasts this time to cheer us all up. They’re out looking for the second one now.”
“Two Wedding Feasts!” beamed Angela smugly. “No-one’s had two for years! All three Families are coming. It’ll be the best wedding ever!”
“Tilly!” Vincent pleaded. “There’s no time for this.”
“I needed to make sure you were all right.” She stroked his face. “I thought you were dead. When -”
She stopped in mid-sentence. It occurred to her that the others probably didn’t know what had happened to Daddy, so it was best if she said no more. They thought that Daddy was just missing. Best leave it that way, in case she got her brother into even more trouble.
“I’m fine. Now go! Please!”
Matilda watched the Wedding Feast as he cowered miserably on the floor nearby. She still felt the urge to set him free, as she had his predecessor. But she thought better of it. She had her own man now. There was no point ruining Angela’s wedding for nothing. Blood was thicker than water.
Vincent wrapped an arm round her shoulder, his hand hanging loose on the other side, and guided her towards the front door.
“Okay, I’m going,” she grinned. “Just promise me one thing.”
“What?”
“That you’ll bring Mummy to my wedding tomorrow.”
“I can’t. We’d be seen.”
“I do love a good wedding,” Mummy interjected.
“Just come into the back of the church for five minutes then, before the guests arrive. To wish me luck. The Family will all be asleep during the day, they won’t even notice you’re gone.”
“Okay,” he said, without conviction.
“Promise?”
He didn’t reply. She halted.
“Tilly, you’ve got to hurry. They’ll be back any second. I’m serious.”
She refused to budge. The others flocked around her, hugging her, saying their goodbyes, and she felt the urge to cry again. She knew that she would never see them again. If her Uncles did not kill her before or after the wedding, then Crow surely would. It was hard enough saying her goodbyes to everyone for the last time, but she couldn’t bear the thought that this would be the last time she ever saw Vincent and Mummy as well. Especially not like this, rushing out the door, surrounded by fussing relatives, with no opportunity to tell them both what they meant to her. They had to come to the wedding, so she could see them one last time. It would just be too sad otherwise.
“Okay, I’ll be there,” he huffed. “Now go!”
The Family didn’t lie. If he said he’d be there, then he would keep his promise. And Mummy, too. Her wedding day would now be perfect and complete.
She hugged him, and made her way to the front door, trying not to trip over the misshapen little children who frolicked at her feet.
#
Mandy very nearly had a heart-attack when Matilda leapt excitedly into the front passenger seat of her car.
“Vincent’s okay,” she beamed. “And he’s bringing Mummy to my wedding!”
“Where did you come from?”
“The House, of course.”
“Which house?” asked Mandy, clinging on to the steering wheel as if her life depended on it. Her hands looked bruised.
“What is it?” Matilda asked. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing,” snapped Mandy. “Now get back under that fucking blanket so we can go back home.”
“Daddy doesn’t like swearing,” Matilda told her, with a lot less conviction than normal. In fact, if she didn’t know better, Mandy would have sworn she was taking the piss.
“Daddy’s fucking dead,” Amanda replied, and pulled out into the street without waiting for Matilda to hide herself under the blanket. After what had just happened to her, she didn’t really give a toss anyway.
#
Four bulky figures watched from the shadowy alleyway as Mandy drove away, melting into the darkness as she passed them by. One of them held a sack over his left shoulder, with feet protruding from the bottom. It had been a productive night. For some reason, there always seemed to be men roaming around in the park at night every weekend, and it was an easy way to stock up for the Wedding Feast. He was the new Head of the Family unless his brother came home again. Giving Angela two men for her Wedding Feast was a good way to show the others that he was now the Alpha Male.
“That was Matilda,” he growled as the car went by. He had mixed emotions. He would know the car again; it wouldn’t take long to track her down now. On the other hand, he felt shame that a niece of his could share a car with an Outsider, making no attempt to hide herself, and no attempt to eat her companion. She had always been weak though. She was too much like her grandmother.
“We take her tomorrow night,” he declared. “And we bring her Wedding Feast back here with her.”
The sack groaned. He was waking up in there. He slapped the sack against the wall to stun the Wedding Feast inside. It was time to go home, before the dawn. His daughter Angela would be so pleased when he showed her what he had brought her. With two sacrifices there to distract the guests, there was no doubt at all that she would make it through the ceremony unmolested.
#
It was the morning of the wedding.
Philip was going to church from his parents’, and Tilly from his house. He was surprised that she knew of the tradition about the bride and groom staying apart the night before they married, but she insisted that it was a custom that Outsiders had borrowed from the Families. The Family would never let a groom spend the night with the bride before the wedding, because he was liable to get over-excited and eat her. Philip had assured her that there was no danger of him trying to snack on her in the early hours of the morning, but she had insisted they keep the tradition in any event.
Father was supposed to be keeping an eye on her this morning, and driving her to the church in his now severely dented Audi. He had phoned during the night, though, to say that Matilda’s bedroom door was open, and there was no sign of her anywhere. Mandy had been the first port of call, but she had been extremely evasive when he had called, and had ended up hanging up on him and turning off her phone. She was up to something. Then again, she always was.
He was genuinely worried about Tilly. He had surprised himself at this. He should have been pleased if Mandy had somehow managed to dispose of her, as the wedding would then be called off. But for some inexplicable reason, he was desperate that she should be okay. And he knew how devastated Matilda would be if the wedding fell through. He was not used to feeling empathy. It felt rather strange.
Mandy came to see him at about nine that morning. Tilly was not with her.
“How’s your mother?” she asked as she brushed past him into the lounge. Mother sat in a corner, staring vacantly into space. Her left eye flickered from time to time, but other than that she was completely motionless. She had been like this ever since she had woken up that morning. If she hadn’t pulled herself together by Monday, he would have to take her to the doctor’s for some medication.
“Still in shock,” he sighed. “What have you done with Tilly?”
“It’s “Tilly” now is it?” she pouted.
“Matilda, then. Where is she?”
“Back at yours. Don’t worry. She’s perfectly safe. We just went out for her Hen Night.”
“Mandy, what’ve you done?”
“Nothing. She just wanted me to drop her round to see her family before your wedding.”
Philip froze. Why would she want to see her family,