An hour ago, he was on his back sprawled on the dining room table, big enough for twenty-four guests. On his back, right there, in the middle of a selection of crumbs, plastic wrappers and half-eaten fast food from the fridge. Three-quarters of a second pizza was balanced on his groaning belly. He managed a lazy, sideways look at the letter. ‘Ok, then!’ he groaned, snatching it, holding it up above him and tearing it open. ‘What now?’
Vincent, there are things here in this house which no one should find. No one. Least of all the Malsaurians.
Vinny grunted, propped himself up on an elbow and shook his head. The pizza slid down the front of his grey hoodie. It rolled across his jeans and onto the floor. The words might have been all nonsense. Certainly, it was all the usual, fancy, tricksy nonsense that his father came out with.
‘Malsaurians?’ he said out loud to himself. He stuck his finger in his mouth and used his fingernail to remove a piece of olive from his teeth. ‘Looks like Dad’s finally found a chair in the crackpot corner. Well, at least he remembered my name. That’s something, I suppose.’
But that was an hour ago, before the urgent tone of the text message. Before he had admitted to himself that his father might be nuts, but he wasn’t stupid. Before he’d stuffed the letter into the back pocket of his jeans without reading the rest of it and wheeled the Harley Davidson out to the safety of the driveway. Before the sheer size of the place suddenly spooked him like it had never done before. Before he’d fetched the petrol cans from one of the garages. Dropped them onto the ground, hammered his forehead, repeating over and over, ‘Malsaurians? Malsaurians?’ Before he’d run, looking over his shoulder, in a panic, splashing the stuff all through the ground floor rooms like some mad crazy idiot.
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