Bloodeye by Craig Saunders Read Free Book Online Page A

answered.

 
     
     
    26
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Keane wasn’t entirely sure what month it was when his house was repossessed, but it was cold enough for a coat indoors at the time because the gas had been turned off. He wasn’t entirely sure if the electricity had been cut, too, because he didn’t use anything electric.
    When people called at the door, he was polite enough. Sent them on their way when he could, let them in when he couldn’t, and handed over the keys, eventually, when it was time.
    He didn’t go bankrupt, and he wasn’t destitute. He had money in the bank. It was just that he didn’t want the house anymore, and he didn’t have the energy to sell and buy and move all the things that the house was full of. So, he guessed, he let the bank do the work.
    And, as the cold weather turned to snow, he was without a home. He sold the car, because that, too, was part of her.
    Whenever his thoughts travelled back, he pushed them forward, instead.
    He bought a new car, a small hatchback. Everything he owned could fit in the trunk and the backseat. There was enough room for him to sleep in the passenger seat if he ramped the chair all the way back.
    With the money he made from the car and his savings and the sale of all his camera equipment, he had enough to live on. Simple needs; food, mainly, and gas. The car was taxed and insured on his old address. He didn’t bother changing it.
    No job or address, a bank account with money in it. A car, a few bags of things he couldn’t or didn’t want to live without.
    Quiet time.
    Keane was having quiet time, out of the light where his shadow couldn’t find him.
    He didn’t know if it was nuts.
    Truth is, he didn’t care. Didn’t care for anything at all.
    Nothing matters, he thought, as he sat once again in the cold, away from the passing lights of the traffic. Muted shadow travelled through the car. His shadow.
    Every time the lights hit Keane, his eyes roamed the dancing shadows, searching for him. Searching for his killer shade.
    And what are you going to do if you find him again?
    Keane spent the earlier part of winter ’06/’07 wondering about that and little else.
    He didn’t worry if he was insane. He thought he probably was.
    Teresa thought so, too.
    Get back on your horse, baby, she’d say, admonishing him gently, like she always did.
    “I can’t,” he’d say in the empty car while frost crept along the inside of the windscreen. “I’ve lost my horse, Teresa,” he’d say. “Lost my fucking horse.”
    Sometimes he cried. One night he got to wondering if her corpse was frozen and crusted with ice in the dark back in the cave, but he shied away from that thought pretty quickly.
    Christmas passed unnoticed, as did New Year’s Eve.
    He didn’t know it was ’07 until maybe the fifth day of the new year, when he left the car for supplies and a hot meal his body craved.
    “Shit,” he said, looking at the papers at the newsstand in the service station on the London Orbital.
    People looked at him as they passed. He didn’t mind that they stared and wrinkled their noses. He knew he stank. His hair and beard were greasy, straggling things. His clothes were crumpled because he slept in them. He reeked of stale tobacco and body odor. His teeth were yellow and his breath rancid from sweet drinks and lack of brushing.
    “Shit,” he said again, aware of a young mother scowling. The woman put herself between Keane and her toddler as she passed.
    I look like a tramp, thought Keane. He wondered, for a moment, if he cared.
    You might not, said Teresa. But I do.
    The last time his lips had touched her, he’d had his face in her blood on a cold, dirty floor. The last time they’d kissed.
    He put his hand to his cheek, half-expecting to find something tacky at the side of his face. But there was only his beard.
    “Sir?”
    He sniffed, aware he was crying in public, looking like a tramp.
    “I’m okay,” he said, thinking someone was asking after him,