Lyle, trance-like, keeps on scribbling words that August registers. Word after scribbled word until the heavy three-chinned goon thug’s right forearm connects with Lyle’s nose and he is thrown back off his chair onto the floor of the living room, his nose erupting with blood that runs down his chin.
‘Lyle,’ I scream, rushing down to him, hugging his chest. ‘Leave ’im alone.’
Lyle gags on a glob of blood in his mouth.
‘Jesus Christ, Tytus, what’s—’ Teddy stammers, stopped immediately by the blade point of a sharpened silver Bowie knife that Iwan Krol whips to his chin. This blade is a monster with teeth, it’s alien-like and gleaming, hissing on one sharp slicing side and shrieking with a serrated opposite edge, evil metal teeth for hacking things I can only imagine – necks mostly.
‘You shut the fuck up, Teddy, and you might survive this night,’ Iwan says.
Teddy recoils cautiously in his seat. Tytus looks at Lyle on the ground.
‘Get him outta here,’ Tytus says.
The wiry thug joins the heavy thug standing over Lyle and they drag him along the living room floor for two metres with me hanging onto him around his chest.
‘Leave him alone,’ I scream through tears. ‘Leave ’im alone!’
They pull Lyle to his feet and I drop off him, hard to the ground.
‘I’m sorry, Frankie,’ Lyle says. ‘I love you so much, Frankie. I’m so sorry, Frankie.’
The wiry thug drives a fist into Lyle’s mouth and Mum rounds the living room table with a bowl of her spaghetti bolognese that she cracks over the head of the sucker-punching goon.
‘Let him go,’ she screams. The caged animal that’s spent a lifetime inside her and has only seen daylight three or four times wraps its arms around the neck of the heavy thug, Mum’s monster digging its full-moon wolf fingernails deep into his cheeks and face, so deep the thug’s skin comes off in scratches of fury and blood. She’s howling now like she did when she was locked away for all those days in Lena’s room. Banshee wails, terrifying and primal. I’ve never been so scared in my life, of Mum, of Tytus Broz, of Lyle’s blood on my hands and face as he’s dragged on down the hallway of the house.
‘Stop that bitch,’ Tytus says calmly.
Iwan Krol rushes around the kitchen table, Bowie knife in his right hand, and August rushes around the table from the opposite side and meets Iwan Krol at the start of the hallway. He raises his fists like an old 1920s boxer. Iwan Krol instantly swipes the blade at August’s face and August ducks this attack, but it was only a diversion for Iwan Krol’s swift left leg kick that sweeps August’s feet off the ground so he lands heavily on his back. ‘Don’t you two dare fuckin’ move,’ Iwan Krol barks at us as he rushes down the hall behind Mum.
‘Mum, behind you,’ I shout. But she’s too rabid to register, desperately clutching at Lyle’s arms, trying to drag him back down the hallway. Iwan Krol switches the Bowie knife into his left hand and, with two impossibly quick and hard backhand thrusts, drives the knife’s handle butt into Mum’s left temple. She drops to the floor, her head hanging loosely over her left shoulder, her right calf bent back behind her right thigh like she’s a crash test dummy who’s hit one too many walls.
‘Frankie,’ Lyle screams as he’s dragged out the front door. ‘Frankiiiieeeee!’
August and I rush to Mum but Iwan Krol meets us in the hallway and drags us back to the dinner table, our spindly thirteen- and fourteen-year-old legs not powerful enough to get a firm grip on the ground to fight back against the force of the killer’s furious dragging. He’s pulling me so hard my shirt’s popping up over my head and all I can see is the orange cotton blanket of the shirt front, and darkness.
He throws us onto our dining table chairs. Our backs are turned to Mum, who’s lying in the hallway unconscious, or worse, I don’t know.
‘Sit the fuck down,’ Iwan Krol says.
I’m struggling to breathe in the fear and the violence and confusion. Iwan Krol takes a rope from the army-green duffle bag. In a flurry of movement he wraps the rope around August three times and ties him tight to his dining chair.
‘What are you doing?’ I spit.
Tears and snot are pouring through my nose and I can barely stay upright on my seat, but August just sits quietly on his