"People would run from Harry if they knew him like I do. They'd hear his name and run as get away as they could from the sound of it. I know that he's strange, that he's someone you should never meet in your lifetime; but I have met him. I've not run from him. So, now I believe in fate. I'm his, forever."
*
Liam's face dropped into an expression of guilt once more. This time, it was mixed with something that Louis could only guess as being the serenity of relief. Relief, perhaps, upon hearing that Louis knew exactly what he was getting with Harry—that while he was dangerously enamoured, he'd never been blinded by love.
"Do you trust him?" Liam asked.
"No." Louis replied.
Liam's eyebrows raised slightly, "Why not?"
"Because it hurts to trust. I'm not getting hurt again."
In the dark bedroom, there was a glint of vicious delight in Louis' eyes. Delight born from the knowledge that he was always a step ahead of the person he was speaking to. It was a foreign look that Liam looked at, but one he'd seen many times on Harry's own face. Louis had caught the infectious delight, and there was no taking it away from him.
"I trust the parts that Harry's truthful about—" Louis said, "his feelings for me, for those he cares about; how he'd go to the world's end to keep me safe. I'd lean into a gun if he held it at my heart. But, I'd be wrong to trust his words. Wrong to trust his thoughts, his decisions, and whether his cruelty has a limit. There are more lies than truth in him. I'm completely and utterly obsessed."
Louis shifted, leaning back on his hands, "What do you know about Diana?"
The topic of conversation changed so quickly that Liam had to pause for a moment while his brain caught up,
"Not much." He said, "She's nineteen. Green eyes, black hair. About five foot four. Turns up once in a blue moon. She's the jealous type.. Really hates Zayn."
"Do you know about her family life?"
"Not really. She avoids them. Harry's the one she's closest to, and they've got a rocky relationship."
"What are they like together?"
"Like siblings but to their intensity. You and I bicker a lot. You annoy me and I shout at you. I annoy you and get yelled at by everyone. We both storm off and by the time we see each other again, we're back to normal."
"Yeah."
"Well, they're the same, but more. I've seen them punch, hit, and abuse one another to the extent of broken bones. In the same hour, I've seen them sit together in intimacy and chat about whatever comforts them. Diana's faithful to Harry. He's her only leader."
"And their mum? Does Diana ever see her?"
"No. Told me that she doesn't get along with her."
Louis hummed approvingly, "They're a whole family of liars."
"How so?" Liam asked, leaning back against the bed and putting his hands in his pockets.
"A mum who lost one of her daughters wouldn't let the other one just wander off and go missing. Either the mother's ignorant to where her daughter is—which, based on what I just said, makes no sense—or she's covering up the truth by lying. She feeds those in the village another story than what she knows. A nicer one."
"Why would she lie?"
"Why wouldn't she? There were four children in that house. One murdered his teacher and classmate, one had fits of hysteria, the other talked like the devil was in her. Their mother had one child worth boasting about, and that one got killed by the others. Children like that won't magically turn into full-functioning, healthy adults. She lies out of shame. She's ashamed of her children."
Liam nodded slowly, and Louis tapped his fingers on the jar of frogs. He smiled, blue eyes glistening.
"I don't know or care for how much their mum knows about them. She might know everything, or close to nothing. What I am certain of, is that she knows something. The children from Rosewood Gardens are bad people. All of them."
***
The evening went on, and Louis did his nightime routine just as always. He brushed his teeth for two minutes, played with various fidget toys until half-eight exactly, and cuddled up to his parents on the sofa while watching a film until nine. After that, he went up to his room—by which time, he'd usually have a shower and put his pyjamas on for bed. Today, however, he went upstairs and put on his shoes. He snuck into Liam's room and took a black hooded jacket from the drawer, and the keys to his lamborghini from the bedside table. Once in his own bedroom, he opened the drawer of toilet roll tubes and found the small torch that he liked to hide in them. It only half-worked, which was half more than Harry said so Louis was still quite happy.
He flicked it on, watched the shadows of his fingers on the wall when he wiggled them in front of the light, before running to jump on the bed.
Louis came from a large family with many siblings, and many talents. He had seven sisters, of which the second eldest had a skill for engineering. To Louis' amazement, she'd managed to tweak his tape recorder into speaking when spoken to. This came in handy when Louis was fast asleep on a school morning, and his mother would call for him. The tape, that he'd recorded himself, would reply with "Yes!" and a few moments later, "Maybe!"
Louis sat on the edge of his bed, and pressed the button.
"Louis?" he said,
"Yes!" the tape recorder replied,
"Are you in bed?"
"Maybe!"
"Goodnight then. I'll see you tomorrow."
Louis wound the tape back to the beginning and laughed to himself.
A set of footsteps walked past his door and cast a shadow over the carpet. They went in the direction of Liam's room, then back to pause at the top of the stairs. Louis could tell by the sound alone that they were his brother's, as all of the women treaded lightly and there were only three other options—Louis himself, his father, and his brother. Liam was the one who rattled the floor with how much weight he slammed into the ground with each step.
Louis unlocked his door and stepped out. Liam stood at the top of the stairs looking rather puzzled.
"Have you seen the keys to my Lambo?"
"No." Louis said.
"I've lost them."
"I can see that."
Liam stood puzzled for a few more minutes. "Ah, good thing I have two cars then, isn't it?"
Louis smiled at him as the man made his way down the stairs, grumbling to himself.
He continued to smile as he walked back to his room and locked the door. As he made his way to the balcony, the polite smile turned into one of duper's delight. He took the lamborghini keys from hes pocket and tossed them on his bed before shutting the balcony doors behind him.
Louis climbed down the vines and dropped behind the rosemary bushes. The front door slammed shut as he reached the corner of the wall, and Liam walked out to his 4X4, carrying Harry's parcel under his arm.
He was on the phone to his girlfriend, and in the darkness of the driveway, never noticed Louis follow him and jump into the trailer of the car.
The engine rumbled and Louis tucked himself behind a set of crates full of old DVDs and broken records. He had a balaclava around his neck, that he pulled over his nose and mouth, and a black baseball cap that he covered his hair with. Even if you were to look, you'd not see the boy sitting the trailer of his brother's 4X4. The only thing that gave him away was the subtle stimming to calm his nerves and comfort him from the idea that he'd gone out for the first time in years without his Burberry coat.
***
Louis wasn't sure how much time had passed between when the car had started and when it stopped because he'd watched the sky the entire way, and had day-dreamt far more dreams than stars he'd counted. The car was parked in the corner of an underground carpark—the same one as Diana had taken him to. While Diana had parked on the floor above, Liam had parked on the floor itself, in the far corner, and at such an angle where the back of the vehicle was against the wall and Louis was in a perfect place to see what was happening.
Louis hadn't imagined it so in his head, which irritated him, but Liam had also removed the difficult task of getting to the security room again without getting caught. Louis was quite happy where he was, and felt much safer there.
Liam got out of the vehicle with the parcel, locked the doors, and wandered over to where Zayn was sitting on the floor with a cluster of other men that Louis had never seen but assumed were also part of the River Boys gang.
None of them spoke when Liam approached and sat with them, which made Louis question why until his question was cleared up by Harry who stepped out from the door he'd come from the time before.
He looked particularly handsome, Louis thought, with his hair tied back in a bun and a black button-down shirt with its sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He had a belt designed for carrying weapons, in which was the brass gun on his right hip and a dagger on his left. He walked up to Liam, flicking his fingers in a beckoning motion.
Liam handed him the parcel. Harry didn't sit with the men, but rather at a distance which made it seem like he was both too prideful to sit among his pack and too uncomfortable for such intimacy.
As the River Boys' members all spoke amongst one another, Harry unwrapped the parcel, examined the white powder in its bag, and tore a slit in it. He didn't smoke the drug, nor did he inhale it, dilute it or anything that Louis expected. Instead, he picked the bag up in two hands, slipped his tongue through the slit and licked the powder out of it. He lapped at it, eyes closed, tongue pushing through the opening until he'd consumed what he estimated as a fair amount.
He licked his lips with a smile, and Louis could swear that those vicious green eyes turned his way.
"Get up." He said, voice echoing around the room. The gang members stood.
Harry stood as well, hand resting on his gun. "You've got them ready, haven't you? I'm not going to stand here all night watching you lot give people a bath and a nice haircut."
"They're ready." Zayn said. "All but one."
His voice was tight in his throat, body tense. He was far different from how he'd been with Harry in the garden that night. Almost as if he were with an entirely different person.
"Bring them." Harry said.
Louis counted eleven men as they left the room, all covered in tattoos with weapons in their belts. They left Harry and Louis alone for quite some time, but Harry never turned Louis' way. Louis wondered, perhaps, if Harry had just been looking at the car rather than at him, and the more time passed where he was ignored—the more he believed that.
Fifteen minutes passed and the first gang member came back holding a rope in his hand. As Louis expected, the rope was around the woman's neck. Her hair was buzzcut short, body clean as ever—eyes dull, and skin bruised. The rope, however, didn't end at her. It went on to another woman's neck, then another, then a whole stream of them. Person after person was lined up before Harry.
Harry's stance never shifted, his demeanour never changed; and in Louis' experience—that was not a good thing. The less Harry moved, the more it'd hurt when he'd finally do so.
All of the gang members but Zayn had returned, and the rope had finally ended at a man's neck. He was not the only man in the line, but when they all looked like death itself—even sex itself seemed quite hard to identify.
Harry waited, eyes turned to the door, and Zayn walked in, holding the hand of a child no older than six.
She was unlike the rest—long matted hair and covered in dirt; looked like she'd been living in the wild besides the manmade bruises all over her arms and legs.
Harry stared at her. He stared with the same gaze he'd given the twin babies at the dining table—one sharp enough to make a grown man's hair stand on end. The child, however, did not react. She'd gone just like the rest. There was nothing behind those eyes.
Harry's face followed his stare and turned in her direction, then his body, then his hand went out to her.
"Come here, Darling."
The girl didn't move as though she'd not heard him. Zayn nudged the child, then picked her up and carried her to Harry himself before backing away to where he'd previously stood. Harry knelt down and examined the girl's face. She had bruises in the corners of her mouth from a gag, to her temples, and around her neck.
"Bring me a bucket and water. And bring the binbag behind the door."
Zayn and Liam left the room hurriedly, and came back with the items Harry had demanded.
"Now turn around and face the wall. The whole lot of you."
Everyone turned, and those who didn't were turned by the gang members. Harry waited until he was the only one with his eyes on the child, besides from Louis himself.
The murderer with Raspberry Rose curls lifted the little girl's rags and pulled them off her. He washed the child's body from head to toe, brushed her teeth with the supplies he retrieved from the bag, and combed every knot from her hair. The child never retaliated—but Louis didn't believe she could. While the adults seemed too traumatised to react, the child didn't appear the same. She seemed unable to understand her surroundings and the words spoken to her. There were horrid knots in her hair that Harry had no choice but to tug on; yet the girl didn't move a muscle.
Harry noticed her lack of awareness as well, while he patted her dry with a cloth. He stopped instructing her to move accordingly, and began to sing a sweet lullaby to her instead. When he did so, the young child's eyes turned to look at his mouth.
Out of the black bag, Harry took a velvet dress covered in bows and frills, undergarments, white tights and a pair of black shoes. He dressed the girl and plated her hair until she looked almost like any other child her age.
Harry's gaze shifted from her face to movement in the doorway behind her, and the cold chill that Louis felt run through the man cut his lullaby short.
A man stepped out from the darkness. One with a scar on his face and a limp from a knife to the thigh. He stopped in the doorway and smiled.
"London Bridge is falling down. My fair lady."
*
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- LHNAMELESS