by Ian Woodhead
What stopped him from doing just that was the presence of that knife. Callum groaned aloud while bending over and picking up the weapon. He kept telling himself that he still needed this, that he had to clean off his fingerprints before selling it to the greasy Turk who ran the second-hand shop over on Bethel Road. Callum kept this line in his mind while carefully pushing the blade back into the handle without cleaning it.
He’d tell the boys that tale, no doubt about that. He’d have to embellish the story, perhaps add a bit of dressing and some relish before he boasted about how he fought off three huge men who, he guessed, were big enough to be rugby players. The blood on the blade? Well, that’s what happens when you mess with Callum, simple as. The fishwives, when word got out, would love that one. His reputation would be back to where it belonged and, as a bonus, nobody would deny him old Joe Decker’s patch. A win all around.
The truth of the matter didn’t even come close to having a voice.
Had there been a bit of a scuffle before they went home? Some argument, possibly involving him? He sure hoped not. Callum didn’t want any of those kids to be hurt, not even Sky. Before moving away from the trade bin, he gently lifted the pizza pieces over using his shoe and tried not to bite through his bottom lip when he saw that they’d all land in a puddle of muddy water.
A time taken to lament his loss was cut short when his ears picked up a scraping sound coming from around the other side of the bin. His desire to help whichever boy had received a potentially fatal stab wound threw out any thoughts that he might be in danger. Callum ran around the front of the large plastic receptacle, expecting to encounter one of the boys, hopefully the quiet minion, lying against the wall, with his hand over a gut wound and with hope in his eyes at the unexpected sight of Callum.
His suspicion that he wasn’t alone proved to be correct, but something deep inside that tortured gut of his suggested that the man-shaped lump wriggling across the concrete floor like some huge, brown, fat caterpillar should be avoided. It was just a sack. Of course it was. What else could it be? Once the question was right there, out in the open, waving a little flag, Callum’s narcissistic mind conjured up a whole host of demented possibilities.
“Bugger off, all of you,” he said to his giggling mind, while backing away from the caterpillar-shaped monster. The blade snicked out from the handle. Did he just do that?
“Don’t worry about it, lad. We’ll soon get you out of that sack.” It wasn’t a sack. This thing really was some kind of mutated, giant, shit-brown-coloured, fat caterpillar. Now that he was almost on top of it, he could now see a network of pulsating veins underneath that thin, shiny skin.
“Did that Sky do this to you?” Every cell in his system urged him to stand up, turn then run as fast as he could to get away from this abomination before it was too late.
The time to actually listen to his inner voices had long since passed. Several tiny craters bulged through the skin. Callum blinked rapidly while whatever compulsion that had thrust a border between his body and Callum’s common sense dissipated, but he didn’t even have time to catch his breath before each of those craters vomited a pencil-thin tendril. They exploded towards him and wrapped tight around both his wrists before they started to shrink back, bringing him closer and closer to the fat abomination.
A thick seam of pale white flesh ran to the top of its body, zipping open by the time those tendrils had almost pulled Callum’s two hands within touching distance of that slimy, mucus-like coating. From the abomination’s cavity, a human-like head pushed out through the red mess. Callum was close to losing his mind, but that didn’t stop him from recognising the remains of old Joe.
“This can’t be real,” he moaned. “It just can’t be!” The eyelids slid back at the same time as its mouth opened. Callum pulled his horrified gaze away from those bulging red eyes as that jaw unhinged and opened wider and wider. Inch-long needle teeth filled that terrible cavern, and he just knew that those tendrils were pulling his hands towards that mouth.
“The knife, use the knife!”
That wasn’t one of his own voices.
It didn’t matter where the voice came from. Its sudden arrival broke the spell. Callum thrust the blade into that thing’s left eye then jerked his hands up. To his utter shock, Callum stumbled backwards, with the snapped-off tendrils still attached to his wrists.
Somebody caught him, stopping Callum from falling into the middle of the road. He fell to the ground, breathing heavily, while finding it almost impossible to process what had just happened to him. The strange man, his rescuer, rose what looked like a mud-soaked Nerf gun and reduced the lump of gross into a puddle of stink.
“Are you injured?”
It took him a moment to realise that the mud was talking to him. He shook his head.
The man walked past Callum, crouched beside the puddle, and fished a piece of that filthy pizza out of the muddy water.
“I think I will need your assistance,” he said, wiping the water off the cold food and stuffing the full piece into his mouth.
Callum wrestled with the notion that he had just gone insane while vaguely wondering why he had four rat tails wrapped around his skin.
CHAPTER THREE
Captain Thomas Copperfield moved a little closer to the upstairs window. He nodded to himself when his sharp eyes detected the reappearance of that elusive shadow. Copperfield had spotted his unwelcome intruder a couple of minutes ago, scrambling over the back fence. It was the sheer cheek of the situation which got his goat. The contractors had only finished erecting the last section of his new fence just two hours ago. It took some effort to stop his face from contorting into his trademark scowl.
Jenny kept saying that it made him look ugly. Copperfield pressed his nose against the cool glass. He found it a little spooky how that phrase became the one she used more than any other. His mother (God rest her soul) had a similar saying. She used to say that his face would stay that way if he didn’t learn to smile.
Exactly what had the impudence to test his patience? He had previously put his money on a cat, but now Copperfield wasn’t too sure. Cats didn’t move in that manner. The animal hopped one second then raced along the ground at an incredible speed before stopping suddenly and changing direction. A squirrel perhaps?
“The species is irrelevant, Bullethead. The kink is that the shitter got in.” The sound of his gruff voice in his ears made him more furious than ever.
The scowl found its favourite position. Fuck his mum, fuck Jenny, and fuck any other female who dared to tell him what to do with his face. He even released a low growl just for good measure.
It didn’t matter what species had dared to invade his private domain. It was going to pay with its life. It was that simple. No shitter defied Captain Thomas Copperfield. He’d have to cross the grounds and enter through the side door in order to retrieve the key for the tool shed. Not a problem; that would only take a minute or so. He had a few old traps right at the back of the shed, near the vice. They’d come in handy. Obviously, this job would require the crossbow.
The shotgun would be better suited for the task of extermination, but the captain wasn’t too keen on having some wooden-top coming up from the police station in the centre of Brandale and ringing the gate bell at one in the morning.
Shit, the bloody thing had vanished again. That shitter was a nippy bastard. From the direction it was travelling in, Copperfield guessed that it was heading towards the main house. That suited him just fine. The motion detectors will shed plenty of high-intensity light on his target. It didn’t stand a chance.
He shifted his gaze towards the main house then tilted his head until their bedroom window came into view. God, that place looked so foreboding. That place, that room, now reflected everything he hated about that wife of his. Looking at that black hole felt like gazing into the blackness of her cold soul.
She’d probably be asleep by now, the rancid cow. Not that the lack of light made this obvious. She se
emed to enjoy sitting in the darkness. Not that her state of consciousness made much difference these days, considering she doped herself up on whatever pills she’d managed to find throughout the house. His scowl increased. How she hadn’t died from that cocktail of shitting stuff the rancid cow stuffed down her gob was the ultimate miracle of science. Instead of using the crossbow on the intruder, his life would be far less complicated if he put a bolt through her neck instead.
Copperfield heard movement behind him, followed by the reflection of a widening strip of yellow light in the window, utterly destroying any chance he had of spotting his intruder. “Shut that bloody door,” he said.
“Sorry. It’s just…. Well, it’s just that I thought you said you would only be a minute.”
He waited for her to obey his command before replying. “Jenny, why don’t you go back to bed? I won’t be long.”
“But I’m cold.”
His prey was still out there, somewhere in his extensive gardens, and while he was listening to her annoying whine, that little bastard could have already found its way into his vegetable garden, ruining his entire crop of cauliflowers, carrots, and cabbages. The shitter just had to die. It was that simple.
He turned around and while his gaze drank in his latest acquisition’s superb shape, his mind had already mapped out the route to his crossbow, bolts, and the drinks cabinet. He would need a stiff one to help calm down the anger before going on his hunt. Stiff one? That almost cracked the scowl. He’d had one of those for the past hour.
Jenny sure enjoyed the attention he’d been giving her tonight. Strange; after sex, Copperfield’s mood wasn’t usually this volatile. Then again, considering the fun and game his day had been, it still shocked him that he hadn’t murdered anyone. Still, the day wasn’t over yet, there was still time.
He sighed to himself. Just what was she doing now? His daughter’s best friend tried to adopt the pose of some sultry glamour model but just ended up looking like some back-street prostitute. The similarity didn’t exactly fill him with a prudish sense of disgust. On the contrary, the sight of some nubile, if a little dense, twenty-two-year-old woman ready and willing to perform all sorts of depraved actions upon him did turn him on. At least, it would if she hadn’t already done that to his own fifty-six-year-old body.
Copperfield would need her care and attention but not just now, not until he’d dispensed with his current situation. “Go back to bed, Jenny, and keep it warm for me.” Before she could start with that oh-so-annoying post-teenage pout, he strode over to the woman, cupped her left breast, and roughly kissed her full lips. Her slender hand pushed up his inner thigh. It took a lot of self-control not to allow Jenny to drop to her knees. “Enough,” he growled, pulling her octopus-like limbs off his hot body. “Go on. Do as you’re told. I won’t be long.”
Jenny slinked back into the bedroom and as a final burst of defiance, the stroppy bitch slammed the door. The thought of him rushing in there and showing her just what happened to naughty little girls did help to remove his scowl. It also brought some life to his sleeping sausage. “No, control yourself, Bullethead. She’ll taste sweeter if you allow the juices to simmer.”
He counted the steps back to the window, all the while half-expecting her to open that door again with tears in her eyes and her tongue sliding across her lips. Copperfield knew that if Jenny did pull that trick, there’d be no looking back. The cat or squirrel would be able to have a barbecue in the garden, and he wouldn’t care. The door stayed shut and remained in that position even as his back touched the glass. “Fine, be like that,” he said, turning towards the door which led out of his office complex.
She could wait. It would be more fun to wake her up once this operation had run its course. That way, he’d have the advantage, at least until she came to her senses. Copperfield grinned to himself at that delicious future event. In fact, now that the grin had rooted to his face, the captain decided to leave it there. No more thinking about the rancid cow, alone in that cold bed, and he wasn’t even going to go down the road which led to him kicking the two local contractors to death when he got his hands on those three work-shy layabouts.
Looking back, that probably had more to do with him trying to save a few thousand pounds on employing idiots from the Harmony Estate than anything else. Not one of them had any internal discipline or self-control.
Copperfield threw a shirt on and pulled on a pair of jogging pants before unlocking the door and stepping out into the warm night air. He made his way across the stone path, briefly stopping next to an ornamental well. As per tradition, the captain kissed the tips of his fingers then gently rubbed the roof.
As he continued to way towards the main house, he, as per the norm, mused on how his later life had gone from being the fairly average forces retired officer into what could only be described as a low-budget soap opera. The drama only existed in his mind which was where it would too. The outside world, as well as most of the players he operated, were utterly oblivious to the full picture.
Jenny knew everything, but she just didn’t have the mental capacity to slot all the pieces into their correct place. As long as he continued to satisfy the brain-dead nympho with his downstairs equipment and continue to pay her credit cards, she caused him no trouble. She might be thicker than a whale sandwich, but Jenny knew which side her bread was buttered.
His wife had her pills, the doctor who looked after her as well as administering his own form of ‘help’ whenever she was surfing the Martian winds, and she had her doll collection to talk to whenever she found herself back on planet Earth.
The captain’s only daughter was no problem either as she had decided to travel the world during her gap year. As much as he missed his little princess, her being as far away from the house as possible suited him just fine and her travelling across Saudi Arabia right now made him feel so happy.
Something at the left of his position flashed past a brick wall. He spun around, sure that whatever it had been was significantly larger than a domestic cat. He leaned forward, squinted his eyes, and focused on the top of that wall. Was it his imagination or was there something hiding behind it? If there was something there, then he’d need something more powerful than his small crossbow to take it down. The wall reached to his waist.
Despite being not having any weapon, he hurried across the grass, eager to see exactly what it could be. In his mind, Copperfield imagined it to be a medium-sized dog or perhaps even a goat. It wasn’t as mad as it sounded. Up here, away from the town, there were still a couple of farm-holdings that hadn’t sold their property to the estate agents. What did worry him slightly was how a goat or a dog had managed to get through the fence. It sure as hell hadn’t chewed through.
He reached the wall and leaned over. Copperfield almost felt disappointed to discover nothing there. It had to be his imagination playing up. Those idiots from the estate might have been utterly lazy, but even they weren’t so incompetent to leave out a section of fence. Which reminded him, while he was in the house, he needed to double-check the kitchen to make sure nothing was missing. He allowed them the use of the kettle and the microwave during their stay this afternoon. Granted, they hadn’t made much of a mess. He’d give them that, but still, if anything was missing, even a spoon, then those thieving bastards would know about it. Nobody stole from Captain Thomas Copperfield, not if they enjoyed breathing.
Thomas did see the irony of his last mental threat, considering he had stolen Jenny from the arms of one of those stupid arseholes he’d employed to fix up his security fence. Granted, the event happened almost three years ago, and he was sure that Jamie Dawson had forgotten all about the incident by now. Still, it had happened, right here, in this garden too.
His daughter had brought her new friend over to the house to meet her mum and dad. Copperfield looked over to the wishing well while remembering how Jenny’s hand travelled up his thigh. For the first time in his life, Thomas actually felt real fear. The thought of his wife or
Maggie suddenly coming back down the garden path and catching the young girl’s fingers unzipping his zip was even more terrifying than the heart-stopping moment of walking into that Iraqi ambush back in ‘91.
He didn’t stop her though, not a chance. Hell, it had been months since his wife had shown any interest in sex and even then, the whole dull event had lasted just under four minutes, and that included the time to hold the struggling bitch down while he pulled down her panties. He remembered looking down at those doe eyes while she pulled out his equipment and shoved as much as she could into her warm, moist mouth. After a few more seconds of Jenny playing with him, he couldn’t care less about getting caught.
It had been her who had cut the playing short, moments before the captain was about to explode. She had wiped her mouth then asked for his telephone number. He recalled the look of his wife’s face when she and Maggie came back down that path laden with plates full of sandwiches and glasses of cold beer. She had known that something had happened. Copperfield had known her long enough to recognise the signs.
Not that he had been too bothered. Copperfield took his wife for the last time later that night. She didn’t want it, but that hadn’t been a shock; it hadn’t stopped him from fucking her anyway. He just couldn’t help himself, not after what that girl had done to him earlier on. Copperfield might have even cried out Jenny’s name moments before he exploded into his wife.
He turned back around and reluctantly continued his way towards the main house. After all, those historic thoughts of sex had done wonders for his sleeping sausage and future thoughts of climbing back into that bed then climbing back into Jenny almost made him forget his mission altogether. Copperfield reminded himself about allowing juices to simmer and increased his speed.