Darkest Night. Will Hill

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      Max Wellens strolled through quiet streets, whistling a tune he had been trying to place all evening.

      It was maddening; he was sure it was a television show theme, most likely from his childhood in the 1980s, but none of his friends had been able to identify it, not even Sam, whose knowledge of popular culture was usually encyclopaedic. It was a simple melody – duh-duh-duh-da-duh-dum-duh-da-daa – and it had settled comfortably into Max’s brain, with no sign of it leaving any time soon. The only consolation, as far as he was concerned, was that he had successfully managed to pass the earworm on to his friends; both Dan and Barry had left the pub humming it, cursing him as they went.

      Max smiled at the memory as he turned off the high street and headed for the park gates. It had been a good night: United had won in the Champions League, the special had been pulled pork burgers, and everyone had been on good form, laughing and joking and mocking each other, as they had been doing for the fifteen years since they met on the first day of senior school. But, as it always did, the walk home from the pub filled Max with pre-emptive nostalgia; he had at least a couple of years before he needed to worry, but he knew there was going to come a time when his youthful appearance was going to raise questions that he could no longer answer with claims of yoga and a balanced diet. When that time came, he would leave Nottingham for somewhere nobody knew him and start again; he knew he would have the strength to do it, but the prospect, unavoidable as it was, nonetheless tightened his chest with sadness.

      Part of him believed he should simply tell his friends the truth; he was sure they wouldn’t judge him, and it was far from an uncommon problem these days. But he knew it would change things. And he didn’t want things to change; he never had.

      The sound of the cars and the yellow glow of the street lights on the main road faded away as he walked into the park, his footsteps clicking rapidly across the tarmac of the main path. Trees towered above him on all sides, and Max could hear the movement of animals in the undergrowth and the rustling of branches as they swayed in the gentle night breeze. He followed the path round the lake, past the boats tied up to a small wooden jetty, and out across the football pitches, their rusting goalposts gleaming in the moonlight. On the far side of the field, Max heard voices and laughter coming from the playground. He headed towards it, knowing what he would find: teenagers drinking cheap booze and smoking cheap cigarettes, exactly as he and his friends had done in a dozen similar parks when they were the same age.

      “Mate, you got a fag?”

      The voice came from the swings at the centre of the park, and Max turned towards it. There were five teenagers clustered round the metal frame and three actually sitting on the seats, as clear a social hierarchy as it was possible to imagine. The boy who had spoken was in the middle, wearing tracksuit bottoms and a thick hoodie, and staring at Max with an expression that he no doubt thought looked hard.

      “Don’t smoke,” said Max. “Sorry.”

      The teenager looked at him for a long moment. “Prick,” he muttered, the volume of his voice clearly intended to be audible to Max. Two of the girls giggled in approval, and one of the standing boys, clearly a member of the lower order of the playground hierarchy, clapped him on the back.

      Max stopped. He had no doubt they were harmless, just as he and his friends had been, but he was full of a sudden urge to teach them a lesson, to make them realise that there were things in the night that were far more dangerous than kids full of cider-inflated bravado. And on a gut level, in the base part of himself that he kept hidden from everyone, he was hungry.

      “What?” asked the teenage boy, getting up from his swing. “You got a problem?”

      Max stared at him, feeling the first flush of heat behind his eyes. The boy’s acne-ridden face was pale in the moonlight, his mouth curled into an arrogant smile.

      Don’t rise to it, he told himself. There’s eight of them. Too many.

      “No problem,” he said. “Have a good night.”

      He walked along the path towards the west gate without a backward glance, knowing the boy would stare daggers СКАЧАТЬ