by Ken Preston
Karl waved her in, and she sat down opposite him. A news report was playing on a large screen television attached to the wall, but the sound had been muted.
“Feel all better now?” Karl said. He was still tieless, his collar unbuttoned.
“Yep, fresh as a fucking daisy,” Emma said. “What did you want?”
“Do you have to talk like that?” Karl said. “I mean, come on, would it hurt if sometimes you could try and act a bit more like a lady, and not swear all the time?”
“What is this, are we back in the 1950s all of a sudden? Next you’ll be asking me to pop out to the shops and look for a replacement tie for you.”
Karl opened his mouth and then snapped it shut again.
“You fucking were, weren’t you?” Emma shook her head. “Is that what you wanted to ask me? Because if it is, if you think I’m going to simper down to the shops, every time you dribble your food on your tie, I’m out of here now.”
Karl held up his hand. “For crying out loud, just stop, will you?” He let his hand drop to the desk. “Remember that lead you were working on a while back? Steffanie Coffin?”
“Course I do.” Emma sank back in her chair. She felt sick every time she thought of Steffanie, and her little boy Michael.
“You got that look on your face again,” Karl said. “Like you’re the one responsible for them getting killed.”
“It still feels that way to me.”
“Yeah, well, it shouldn’t. Steffanie knew what she was doing, she knew the risks. You were offering her a way out of the life, Emma. That was a good thing you were doing for her.”
“That’s not the way it turned out, though. She came to me for help, and instead, I got her and her little boy killed.” Emma leaned forward in her chair and pointed at her editor. “I swear, Karl, that’s what happened. Mortimer Craggs ordered a hit on her, because he found out she was passing me information about Terry Wu’s murder.”
“You don’t know that, Emma,” Karl said. “You’re the only one thinks that way. You saw the stories on the news, and in the papers.”
“Yeah,” Emma said, her voice low. “The whole country thinks we got Count fucking Dracula prowling the streets. The only reason we haven’t found him yet is because he stalks the city wearing his invisibility cape.”
“You never read Dracula, did you, Emma?”
“He doesn’t have an invisibility cape?”
“No. You’re confusing him with Harry Potter.”
“Well, fuck, Karl, maybe Dracula stopped off at Hogwarts on the way over here, and Harry loaned him his invisibility cloak. Because you know what? That’s just as credible a story as all the shit I read about those two murders.”
“You still don’t know Craggs had them killed. That thing with Terry Wu and Steffanie could be a coincidence. You really think Craggs would have had Steffanie and Michael sliced and diced like that? He would have ordered a hit on them, not a horror movie gore fest.”
“Are you sure about that?” Emma said, sinking back into her chair. “I’ve heard some pretty graphic stuff from when Craggs was younger, from when he was making a name for himself and the Slaughterhouse Mob. You ever hear that story about the blow torch?”
“Emma—”
“Craggs used it to burn the lips off some poor bastard who’d been chatting up his wife in the pub he owned back then. She was the barmaid, I always thought flirting with the customers was part of the job description. Poor bastard had to have a skin graft from the nose down, and spent the rest of his life eating pureed food, and pissing his pants every time someone struck a match.”
“Emma, you know none of those stories have ever been proved. Craggs hasn’t even got a parking ticket to his name.”
“Yeah, well, I’m telling you, Karl, we get Craggs for that murder, and he won’t have to worry about parking tickets for the rest of his life. And with Craggs in jail, the whole gang folds. They’re nothing without him.”
“It’s not going to happen, Emma,” Karl said, softly. “Not yet, anyway.”
“Yeah, I know. I wanted a career making story, and all I’ve got now is blood on my hands. I just hope Joe Coffin never finds out, because then I’m dead for sure.”
“Yeah, well, Joe Coffin’s sort of why I asked you in here, in the first place.” Karl opened a drawer and pulled out a cigar. He stuck it in his mouth and chewed on it.
Emma sat up again. “What are you talking about, Karl?”
“Remember those two boys went missing, a few days back?”
“Yeah, a couple of ten-year-olds, right? What were their names, um, Peter Marsden and…?”
“Jacob Mills. That name ring any bells with you?” Karl shifted the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other.
“Sweet fuck, you’re telling me that Jacob is Tom Mills’ kid?”
“That’s right, and the coincidence doesn’t stop there, because Tom Mills is married to Laura Mills, previously known as…”
“Laura Coffin.” Emma snapped her fingers together. “Is Jacob Joe Coffin’s kid?”
“No, Joe and Laura divorced twelve years ago, so Jacob is Tom’s kid, poor little bastard. With a piece of shit like Tom Mills for your father, he’s got no chance.”
“So, you think Jacob’s disappearance has got something to do with Steffanie’s murder?”
Karl took the unlit cigar out of his mouth. The end was all chewed and soggy, and Karl had to pull flakes of tobacco off his tongue before answering. “I don’t know, to be honest, but it’s a coincidence, and, despite what I said earlier, I don’t like coincidences.” He popped the cigar back in his mouth. “Pete’s covering the story, but he phoned in sick today, so I wondered if you wanted to take it on, in his absence.”
“Won’t Pete mind?”
“I don’t give a shit what Pete thinks. Last time he phoned in sick we didn’t see him for two months, because he was on an almighty bender. I thought you could interview the kids’ mothers, take Jonny with you, see if he can get some nice shots of them blubbing, something that’ll look good on the front page tomorrow morning.”
“You’re all heart, Karl,” Emma said, as she stood up.
“Hey, wait a sec,” Karl said, pulled open his desk drawer, and produced his ketchup stained tie. “While you’re out and about, if you happen to be passing a tie shop…”
Emma snatched the tie from him.
“I ought to fucking strangle you with it,” she said, and stalked out of his office.
black and shiny
His wrists were red raw, and he had to clench his teeth to stop from crying out every time the rough rope chafed against his skin. The iron rung, bolted into the cellar wall, was old and rusty, and Jacob had spent the last few hours scraping the rope against it, hoping it would fray and split. He had to work quickly, ignore the pain, because the woman would be down to see him soon, with his food. She always untied him, and sat and watched him while he ate the thin soup, and the bread, with trembling hands.
When he had finished eating, then came the worst part, when she would unwrap the blood-soaked cloth around his left arm, and re-open the wound. Jacob cried and screamed, and struggled and kicked, and tried to bite her, and sometimes he fainted from the pain. But however much he fought, the woman was always stronger than him, and she would bleed him, filling a small silver bowl with his dark red blood. And when she had enough, she always bound his arm back up again, and tenderly stroked his sweat covered brow, before leaving him alone once more.
Jacob was feeling weaker every day, so much so he sometimes passed out. Then he would wake up shivering and sick, leaning awkwardly against the damp wall, and wondering how long had passed since he had fainted.
But he knew he had to try to keep alert, stay strong. If she found him now, and untied him, she would see the frayed rope, she’d know he was trying to escape. Jacob closed his eyes, tears squeezing out between his eyelashes, and strained against the rope cutting into his wrists, forcing it up and down against the rusty edge of th
e iron bar.
His shoulders were sore, and his back ached. Sometimes his arms cramped up, and he cried with the pain. He had lost track of time, trapped in the dank, dark cellar. That first night, after they had dragged him down here and tied him up, the man had come back and spent the next couple of hours repairing the cellar door.
When the man had finished, Jacob heard him padlock it shut, plunging the ten-year-old boy into darkness. Jacob barely slept, shivering with cold and fear, uncomfortable and sore, sitting against the damp, rough brickwork. His mind was crazy with fear, alternately wondering why they had kept him alive, and thinking up dreadful tortures that awaited him.
Soon enough, the rustling and squeaking of rats scurrying through the cellar had added to his terror. They scrabbled across his feet, making him scream and kick out wildly, and once he woke up to the sensation of a rat gnawing through the sole of his trainer. He stamped and kicked in the darkness, and heard the rat squealing and scampering away.
Sometimes, that first night, he wondered if Peter might be alive, too, and held captive somewhere else in the house. But then he remembered the woman attacking his friend, and all the blood spilling onto the faded carpet. He remembered the man lapping at the puddles of blood, like a thirsty dog.
Jacob kept scraping the rope against the iron rung. Fear they would find out what he was doing before he had set himself free, kept him going. The pain in his wrists was nothing compared with the horror of what those monsters might do to him if they caught him trying to escape.
Both of his captors scared him, but the woman especially. Maybe that was because he knew her. She had been his mum’s friend. Steffanie always brought Jacob a present when she came to visit, and Jacob had always enjoyed playing with her little boy, Michael.
But she should be dead.
At this thought, Jacob always felt as though his mind would tip over into a black pit of madness. Because he knew that Steffanie and Michael had been murdered. His mum had tried to hide the knowledge from him, tried telling him they had died in a car accident, but Jacob knew the truth. He’d seen the newspaper headlines in the newsagents, and he’d heard his school friends talking about it.
Steffanie and Michael were dead. He had been to their funeral, seen their caskets lowered into the ground, whilst Joe Coffin fell to his knees and wept.
Joe had always scared Jacob. He was so big and powerful, that whenever he stood in front of Jacob, Joe seemed to blot out most of the sunshine. He came to their house in River View Gardens once and stood in their tiny kitchen. He seemed to take up half the room, his head almost touching the ceiling. When he left, Jacob expected to see his footprints smashed into the floor, a spiderweb of cracks spreading out from each one.
But Joe had never hurt Jacob, or said anything mean to him. Not like Jacob’s father. And seeing Joe at the funeral, so desolate with grief, he’d looked smaller and more helpless than Jacob could have ever imagined.
Jacob kept scraping at the rope. Steffanie was alive, but she wasn’t the Steffanie that he used to know and like. This Steffanie was monstrous, she was evil. Jacob had tried pleading with her to set him free. He’d tried reminding her of who he was, and how kind she used to be with him.
But she paid him no notice. She fed him and gave him water. And she opened his wound and bled him.
The rope snapped and Jacob fell forward onto the floor, his face smacking into a puddle of dirty water. He tried to push himself up, but he was too weak, and his arms tingled with pins and needles. Jacob managed to rollover onto his back, and lay there flexing his fingers, trying to bring life back to his hands and arms.
Moisture seeped through the back of his shirt, chilling his back. Jacob wiped dirty water out of his eyes, his fingers numb and clumsy. He sat up as the pins and needles began to wear off, replaced in his left arm by a dull throb around the site of his festering wound. The pain was growing in intensity, and Jacob could smell the stink of infection.
Now he was free of the rope he realised that it might all have been for nothing. The trapdoor leading outside, to the garden, was padlocked shut. Jacob had given no thought to whether or not the inner door into the cellar would be locked too.
His eyes had grown used to the darkness, and Jacob could pick out a faint rectangular border of light at the top of the cellar steps. He had no idea of the time. Was that daylight outside, or was it night time, and what he could see was light cast from a bulb, or candles?
Jacob shifted on to his knees. Gingerly placing the flat of his hand against a damp wall, he shakily climbed to his feet. A wave of nausea and dizziness washed over him, his vision greying out, and for a moment he was scared that he might faint. But it passed, and his vision returned.
Still leaning against the wall for support, Jacob shuffled over to the steps. He had worked so hard these last few hours, sawing through his bonds, he had given little thought to what he would do next. And now he was free of the rope, all he wanted to do was sit and cry, and call for his mummy.
What would he do if, when he reached the top of the cellar steps, the door was locked? If he could only scream loud and long enough, perhaps he could alert a passer-by. He had tried screaming, the first few hours of his captivity, until his throat had grown sore and hoarse, and his cries for help were little more than a croak. But nobody had come, not even the Steffanie monster, or the man. The cellar was too far away from the road, around the back of the house. Nobody could hear him.
Jacob doubted that he could make himself heard more from the top of the steps than he could in the cellar. The big, old house was just too far away from the main road, heavy with traffic, drowning out any of his faint cries for help that might carry that far.
But if he could just get outside, down to the front of the drive, somebody would see him then. Somebody would rescue him.
Jacob took the first step, and then the next. He leaned against the wall, taking a deep, juddering breath of the cold air.
Gritting his teeth, he continued climbing the steps. Time was growing short, he was convinced of that. He had to get out before they discovered him.
At the top of the steps, Jacob paused again to recover his strength. Struggling his way up that short flight of steps had felt like climbing a mountain. Taking another deep breath, he leaned his shoulder against the door, twisted the handle, and pushed.
Nothing.
The door didn’t budge.
It was locked.
Tears rolled down Jacob’s filthy cheeks as a wave of despair washed over him, and he sank to his knees. He was trapped in this filthy cellar for the rest of his life, whilst the Steffanie monster bled him dry. Or until the infection in his arm killed him.
He wished he had never agreed to explore 99 Forde Road with Peter. If only he had refused, if he had ignored Peter’s schoolboy taunts, or if the cellar trapdoor hadn't been broken open. Or if this door he was leaning against had been locked, they would have had to turn around and go back home.
And none of this nightmare would have happened, and Peter would still be alive, and Jacob wouldn’t be trapped down here, slowly dying.
But the door hadn’t been locked, had it? The two boys had struggled to open it, as it scraped against the flag-stoned floor along the passageway outside, but it wasn’t locked.
Jacob lifted his head.
It wasn’t locked.
And every time Evil Steffanie came to feed him and bleed him, he heard the door scraping along the floor as she opened it.
Jacob stood up and braced his shoulder against the cracked wooden panel. He gathered his strength and pushed as hard as he could.
Noisily, it gave a little, and a chink of light fell on Jacob’s face. He pushed again, and it gave a little more. It was too difficult. The last time he had pushed this door open, there had been two of them. And he had been healthy and strong.
Jacob realised his wrists were bleeding, where the rope had scraped away the skin. He looked at the bandage on his arm. A fresh, dark patch of blood was seeping thro
ugh the fabric, along with yellow pus, stinking of infection.
He had to get out of there. If he stayed in the cellar much longer he would die, even if the Steffanie monster did not kill him for trying to escape.
Jacob shoved his shoulder against the wooden door once more, a weak sliver of light falling across his face, taunting him with the possibility of freedom. He closed his eyes, clenched his jaw, and with a silent prayer to God, please, please, let the door open this time, he pushed as hard as he could.
The door scraped noisily open another inch, got caught on something, and then juddered open another inch or two, and stopped.
Jacob sank to the floor, gasping, his whole body trembling. He knelt on the floor, sweat dripping from his face, shivering in the cold, waiting for his heart to stop thumping so hard in his chest.
Waiting to find out if they had noticed all the noise he had made opening the door.
Jacob raised his head and looked through the gap between the door and the door frame. He could see the stone-flagged passage, illuminated by rays of weak, autumnal sunlight, struggling through the dirty panes of glass in the back door.
The door that led outside, to the garden at the rear of the house.
To freedom.
Jacob pressed his face against the gap, the edges of the door and the frame pressing into his cheeks.
He hadn’t pushed the door open enough; the gap was too narrow for him to fit through. He stepped back and shifted position, thrusting his wounded arm through the gap first, and then his shoulder. That was as far as he could get.
Jacob screamed in frustration, and kicked at the door, and pounded at it with his free arm. Then he stopped and held his breath.
Had he heard something? He strained to listen above the thumping of his heart, holding his breath for as long as he could. Finally he let his breath out in an explosive whoosh and gasped for air.
Jacob pushed at the door again, his shoulder still jammed in the gap. But he had used the last of his fading strength to push it open this far. He had nothing left. If only it was another inch wider, he was sure he could squeeze through.