The Cleansing by Sam Kates

Author:Sam Kates [Kates, Sam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781629270050
Amazon: 1629270059
Goodreads: 40018606
Publisher: Smithcraft Press
Published: 2013-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

The car didn’t like to start in cold weather at the best of times. When it hadn’t been used in almost two weeks, Tom had no chance of coaxing it to life.

It didn’t much matter. He had the run of the neighbourhood and there was a street a little behind his of older, larger houses with walls and gates and drives and huge, mature gardens that Tom could not imagine having to tend. Most of these houses had double garages that contained at least one car, often two, shut away from the elements.

He gained entry to each of his immediate neighbours’ properties by smashing the glass panes in the back doors with a lump hammer. The first one had been the hardest. Tom gasped at how loud the breaking glass sounded and looked around guiltily, though he knew he was alone. He removed from the houses all usable food and drinks. Some of the neighbours had kept pets—dogs, cats, guinea pigs, hamsters—but none had had the foresight of Dusty’s former master who had at least given the dog a chance by opening four tins of food and leaving the doors unlocked.

He roamed further afield, to the larger houses, only stopping when he had collected sufficient food and drink to withstand a siege.

Tom did not enter the darkened bedrooms of the houses, from where the smells emanated. He only went upstairs to empty bathroom cabinets of sleeping pills and painkillers; soon, he had accumulated quite a collection. Enough to do the job, he hoped.

In each house he paused for a moment before each Christmas tree. Many had presents beneath them. One such present, a chocolate orange by the size and feel of it, had the name ‘Mr Evans’ printed on the tag in a childish scrawl. Tom thought he knew which child this house belonged to and could not bring himself to go upstairs, not even to inspect the bathroom cabinet, for fear of seeing the tiny, rotting body. He replaced the present under the tree; it somehow seemed wrong to take it.

Tom and Dusty ate and drank their way back to strength, the dog’s presence helping to keep the black pit at bay, though not banish it completely. As their weakness receded, they took to going for longer and longer walks in the empty countryside, though Dusty seemed to enjoy them more than Tom. A sense of solitude pressed down on him, making him feel insubstantial, a ghost. This sensation came to a head one late evening when the air was unseasonably mild and the moon hung full and low in a clear sky.

As he strolled through parkland at the furthest reaches of town, Tom came to a suspended wooden footbridge spanning a lazy stretch of river that was brown in daylight, black at this hour, leading to more parkland beyond. Dusty had gone ahead, snuffling through the sparse undergrowth at the river’s edge.

Tom stepped onto the bridge and walked down the centre strip, the boards faintly echoing beneath his boots.

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