The Bone Architect

by Ian Woodhead

  The Bone Architect

  By

  Ian Woodhead

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright July 2014 by Ian Woodhead

  Proofed by Linda Tooch

  Edited by Rebecca Bennett

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning or otherwise, without prior permission of the author.

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  Act One

  Fifteen years ago.

  Like a manic bitch in heat, his captured girl hadn’t stopped panting since he pushed open the cellar door. Fragments of an indistinct sentence were released with each exhalation. Mitchell Brady slowed his own breathing down, so wanting to hear every scrap, smiling at the almost musical quality to the seventeen year old girl’s plea for help.

  There would be no help coming for this little imp, her train pulled into the terminus as soon as he picked her up last night. Mitchell ran his thick fingers down the edge of the cellar door, absently wondering what had been going through her mind when he pressed down on the brake pedal.

  From what he learned from his brief time with the girl last night, Mitchell didn’t need to wonder too hard. Laney wasn’t a complicated animal. When his Ford Escort stopped, the girl, his next victim, could have only thought of getting out of the pouring rain, warming up, followed by getting some food into her rumbling stomach. The poor thing hadn’t eaten for two days.

  Mitchell had fulfilled her unspoken needs as well as a few more besides. Of course he had, for last night was Laney’s final day on this planet. As host (and executioner) he had no other choice but to show her what she’d willingly forsaken.

  Fully sated, cleaned up, and dressed in fresh clothes, her life story vomited forth. Mitchell sat back, nodding in all the right places, listening to her warble on, whilst absently wondering why his ‘guest’ hadn’t inquired as to why a man, living on his own, would have feminine clothes conveniently stored in his wardrobe.

  She sat, cross-legged on Mitchell’s black leather chair, wearing a green t-shirt, panties, and a pair of bright yellow socks. It amused him to watch this pretty young thing idly brushing her index finger across a dark stain on the t-shirt’s hem. That spot was all that now remained of Candy Briggs, the last person who had sat on that very chair, travelling the very same well worn path that this girl now journeyed.

  Up until two hours ago a significant piece of Candy still remained, but that now resided in their stomachs, along with grilled mushrooms, thick cut chips and fine-trimmed beans. Mitchell looked forward to sharing this young lady with his next guest.

  Laney Bowers filled his living room with words of abuse, poverty, disappointment, and desperation. He sat back in his tattered armchair, sipping fine single malt, soaking up her recant of misery. Her actual tale meant nothing to Mitchell; he only needed to feel the desolation accompanying her story.

  It’s what his silent partner needed in order to thrive.

  He’d played his part as confessor, surrogate father, and caring older teacher perfectly. His silent partner rewarded him, as she always did, with allowing Mitchell to take the girl to his bed.

  Mitchell ran his wet tongue across the top of his grey uneven teeth, imagining that he could still taste the girl’s juices. Of course, he couldn’t, his breakfast of cold spicy mackerel and cornflakes were the only tastes that he discovered with his exploration. He pulled his lips back, exposing his teeth to the bare light bulb directly above the thick metal pole set in the middle of the room.

  She could not see who had flooded the dull cellar with white light from the kitchen (the illumination from the forty watt bulb would only give off enough visibility for her to watch Mitchell work his magic.) But she would know only two people currently occupying the huge house were her and her host.

  Her impression of tattered bellows ceased. Mitchell pulled his work boot off the next step down and wrapped his thick fingers around the edge of the door, listening to the bound rope twist. Laney followed the same behavioural patterns as the others. Right now, the need to see who had opened that door spread over her coat of terror. It amused him greatly that hope could be such a powerful force.

  Mitchell slammed the door shut and kept a tight reign on his own excited breathing, listening to her panting restart while her attempts to free herself from that pole grew ever more frantic.

  “Please, let me go.”

  That voice did not belong to the same person after a full night of endless shrieks mixed with moans, gasps, and crying had tainted her previously honeyed sounds with grit. Laney now spoke like an old lady.

  “I know you’re there, Mitchell. I ain’t a fucking idiot. Let me go, this isn’t funny any more.”

  The teenager crowed her last collection of words, each syllable slicing chunks from Mitchell’s enthusiasm. The extension of his arm, Mitchell’s favourite cutting implement, now reverted to a rough wooden handle and an eight inch metal blade, still coated with Candy’s dried insides.

  Even after all the evidence, Laney’s gauche mind glossed over the facts with a thick brush of fantasy. The silly bitch actually believed he was playing with her.

  Two players, acting in a convoluted theatre.

  Mitchell’s silent partner stirred and he gulped down his apprehension. If she assumed Laney did think her life really wasn’t in danger, then Mitchell would suffer her wrath no matter what the runaway’s inevitable outcome.

  Nine stone steps separated Mitchell from the girl’s enlightenment. The gap between the girl’s next accusation served to help re-establish the picture he thought had finished. Mitchell almost galloped down the remaining steps, ensuring her first sighting of him was the knife.

  Her bulging eyes, dripping with terror, told Mitchell that he’d been wrong. This little girl did believe. All of his preparations had not been in vain. His knife sang, yet still he hesitated. His silent partner stayed silent, even now, right at the foundation of the butchery. The ancient woman residing inside his head should be singing even louder than the knife, amplifying his excitement.

  “Please, don’t hurt me, Mitchell,” she snivelled. “I’ll do anything you want”. Laney tried to smile, to look seductive, yet the movement looked grotesque.

  Her actions gave his exhilaration its own boost without his partner’s help. “You did that last night, my dear, when we fucked for a good couple of hours.” Her tears cleaned a narrow gully down her cheeks. Those two irregular rods of baby soft flesh felt like yet another slap in the face to his preparations. Mitchell growled and lost the distance between them, slamming his blade deep into the girl’s side. Her flesh parted so easily, as if it wanted him to open her.

  Yet his partner still refused to come out and join Mitchell as he and his knife sliced through Laney’s shuddering body. The girl’s hot blood gushed from the neat wound, flowing over the back of his hand, but without his partner’s involvement, the cutting had no real design. Mitchell, felt oddly bored by the whole proceedings, and to make his mood even darker, Laney’s agonising shrieks were opening up his brain, as easily as his serrated knife parted the girl’s tender meat.

  Mitchell slammed his free hand across her mouth. Laney’s bulging ey
es suggested to him that she’d now given the task of finding more air for her lungs priority. He dropped the knife on the floor and fumbled with his trouser buttons. Now that relative silence ruled the cellar, he found his mind switching to another need. His little girl had tended to all of his wishes in his bedroom before the drugs he’d dropped into her wine glass had taken effect but there was one particular whim she couldn’t fulfil, not whilst breathing.

  His partner remained silent. As he watched Laney struggle to breathe, Mitchell found that he no longer cared. He could do this very well without her watching him, giving Mitchell helpful hints, showing him how to gain maximum pleasure.

  He hooked his boot around Laney’s ankle and dragged her leg across the stone floor, then drove his stiff rod deep inside her. Mitchell gasped in utter ecstasy when he felt her tear. Mitchell worked the blade further into the girl’s flesh, timing each push to coincide with his own pelvic thrusts.

  Laney gave up on living, moments before he exploded into her.

  He dropped back, sitting on the cold floor, watching his penis deflate, watching Laney’s body follow his cock’s example. Mitchell took a deep breath, then winced in annoyance when the stench from Laney’s excrement contaminated the hot metallic of blood that Mitchell so adored.

  The sudden change in his routine widened the fissures, already opened from the apparent loss of his partner. Mitchell fell backwards, lying flat against the floor, stained with the spilled slurry from his last twelve victims. Whilst his body lay next to the eviscerated corpse, Mitchell’s mind clicked out of sync. For the first time in over five years, the voice no longer influenced his thoughts, feelings, and actions.

  Mitchell Brady saw the doorway into the past open. Letting out a sick yellow glow, the illumination rose in intensity, losing the ailing taint, becoming purer and casting away the darkness as it neared his position. He opened his arms, welcoming the bleaching light, wanting this malevolent reality to cease to exist.

  ***

  This rundown property should be condemned; the land rights alone would be worth a fortune. Not that any of the others would listen to Mitchell’s advice. Oh no, they knew best, he was just the junior partner. He ran errands and made the tea. Well, this particular teaboy knew a lost cause when he saw one. Mitchell saw that this property would cost more to renovate than it was worth. He made that sweeping statement back in the office, right after seeing the crappy photos brought in by the so-called owner.

  He took one very careful step backwards. Mitchell had already discovered to his misery that this overgrown urban wasteland contained an untold number of discarded items with the unified purpose of tripping, tearing, or hurting this downtrodden estate agent. The pub called out to him; his car cried out with an even louder voice. Mitchell took his weary eyes off the crumbling house set in its own two acres of land and gazed with a loud accompanying sigh at his locked up red Ford Sierra parked directly outside the rusty metal gates. Common sense encouraged him to leave right now, drive away from this waste of his time and allow a couple of pints of real ale to caress away the layers of built up stress accumulated since he woke up this morning.

  His professional pride obviously thought otherwise, else the mental clamps stopping him from taking another step towards his metal oasis would leave him be. Mitchell had yet to finish his survey. He’d only explored the downstairs rooms; there were two more floors to assess.

  Mitchell gulped down a frustration bubble. As soon as the grey right angles appeared through the screen of green when he first approached the gates, Mitchell had known there and then that the photographs had presented the house in the best possible light. Yet Mitchell had told himself not to stress, to see this as a challenge, to do the best he could.

  His frustration bubble expanded as he followed his own trodden down path back towards the front door. Once he was done here, Mitchell would need to down more than a couple of pints. For the first time since his alarm clock laughed at him, informing his bedraggled form that he was late for work, Mitchell Brady found himself smiling.

  Marion was expecting him home at five. Friday was their roast beef, two veg, and red wine night. Well his sister would be dining alone now. As soon as he was finished with this distasteful task, he’d find a phone and take the first trembling step down the rock road. He would tell his first ever lie.

  He flipped through the five pages of notes he’d amassed and calculated he’d need another hour to finish off this task. By the time he found a phone-box Marion should be back home from shopping.

  “Hi there, you’re not going to believe this, but the company has asked me to survey a property on the other side of the country.” His heart juddered. Mitchell licked his top lips. “Yeah, it’ll be an overnight stay. I’ll be back in the morning though.” A starling eyed him before taking off from the branch three feet above his head. The audience obviously approved of Mitchell’s first lie, and she would buy it. Although suspicious in nature, his older sister thought she knew him better than he knew himself, and little brother would never lie to her.

  Mitchell stopped by the front door, unable to cease his grinning. She wouldn’t even check up on his story. The woman despised the company’s senior partners, according to her, both Roger and David had tried it on with her at their last Christmas party. Unlike Mitchell, his only blood relation obviously wasn’t a stranger to the art of bending the truth. No twenty-something rich men with beautiful wives, gym built muscles, and expensive sports cars would want to bed his overweight, foul-mouthed sister. Even with thick make-up, the woman resembled a bulldog chewing a wasp.

  He chuckled to himself, imagining the look on her face if he actually found the courage to repeat his thoughts to her face. The horrible woman would probably choke to death on her own overcooked cabbage. Mitchell inserted the key, unlocked the thick oak door, and slammed his back against the wood, using his weight to push the door open. Once he was finished here and told his little fib, Mitchell’s time would be his own, meaning he should have a better plan to spend these precious hours rather than drinking himself into a stupor before sleeping it off in the back seat of his car.

  How about a couple of pints, a trip to the cinema, followed by a splendid meal in an expensive restaurant in one of the more exclusive parts of his beloved town? Yeah, now that did sound so much more pleasing than just getting drunk. Food in the evening that wasn’t boiled to oblivion and doused in enough salt to grit a winter road, might actually help him have a decent night’s sleep for a change. Oh yeah, Mitchell actually believed his stress levels were lowering already.

  As for this house, perhaps he could just sketch what he could from the top of the stairs? He stepped over the skeletal remains of a mattress and walked over to the first step, keeping a wary eye on that ceiling above him. Sunlight filtered through a number of holes, creating beams of white dust, its light showing Mitchell the extent of the years of neglect and animal damage.

  Stopping at the top of the stairs wasn’t just an excuse to lesson the workload, anybody with an ounce of common sense would understand that traversing across those boards above his head had potential life threatening consequences.

  “Why even risk the steps?” he muttered to himself. After all, they were bound to be ridden with rot and weak from woodworm. Did he really wish to spend the rest of his day in the cellar nursing a broken leg, wondering if either Roger or David would bother to check his whereabouts. Fat chance of that. Right now, the pair of them would be dining in one of those expensive restaurants that he intended to visit tonight. Heck, he had more chance of finding them spit-roasting his sister than those goons caring about his well-being.

  He could make something up in the comfort of his driver’s seat. Mitchell took out the keys and waved goodbye to the mattress. His original assessment still stood; this property should have been condemned and demolished decades ago.

  Mitchell paused by the open front door, staring at the other keys on the ring. He banged his foot on the solid stone floor, feeling another
rare grin finding its way onto his normally sour face. The only area that he hadn’t checked whilst surveying the ground floor was the cellar. The door leading into the room below here resembled this one, and with it being locked, no passing looter or homeless person would have been able to explore it.

  “I’ve got the key to the door,” he sang, hurrying through the dining room and kitchen. At some time in it past somebody of significance must have lived here, and they had to have had plenty of money. Their client who handed over the keys hadn’t given the three of them much history, only that the previous owner had died forty years ago, and the house had passed from one solicitor to another, each one failing to track down any living relative. This individual had handed the keys over to David whilst confessing that he hadn’t checked out his inheritance due to him living in Germany now. He only wanted its cash value.

  Mitchell lifted the other large key. “If he hadn’t checked out the house that meant…” It meant that only the grey bones of the other person who knew what the cellar contained now remained. His frustration bubble no longer existed, he even put his plans on hold. Except for his plan to commit his first ever lie to Marion, although the contents of his proposed speech would wait until he’d explored the contents of that cellar.

  He’d never been blessed with much of an imagination but right now it raced like an express train, showing him pictures of forgotten paintings, rare, antique furniture, and even a pirate’s chest filled with gold. He chuckled to himself, striking that particular image from the list.

  Could this really be his life changing moment? With both hands to steady himself, Mitchell pushed the key into the lock and turned it, finding to his surprise that the key turned without complaint. He twisted the handle and stepped back in unease when the door swung inwards, his knowledge acquired from a decade of house surveys suggested that only old doors in regular use would open so easily. He sighed heavily, already his hope of finding enough sellable items down there to allow him to move out of Marion’s slimy apartment, as well as leaving the estate agents, evaporated. All he would find down there was more of the same. More mould, more rubbish, and plenty of worthless junk.