Where Wolves Fear to Prey

by G H Mockford

  Andrew took his wife’s hand and they stood near the fire. ‘Don’t look too keen. Count to ten before we answer the door,’ he said, smiling at his wife.

  The doorbell rang.

  Ten. Nine. Eight. Andrew squeezed Tracy’s hand, smiled at her once again and led her out of the living room and into the generous hallway and up to the front door.

  ‘Hello and welcome to Doxie’s Doorstep,’ he said opening the door.

  ‘Good evening,’ said their guest. ‘You must be Andrew and Tracy.’

  ‘Oh, call us A.J and Tray, everyone else does,’ Tracy said with a practised laugh.

  ‘I’m Phil. May I come in?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course, sorry,’ Andrew said. ‘We’ve only been open a while, we’re still finding our feet. Please, this way, come and enjoy the fire.’ Andrew closed the door and showed Phil through to the living room.

  ‘Are your friends with you?’ Tracy asked.

  ‘They’ll be coming later.’

  ‘It’s just the three of you this weekend,’ Tracy said, ‘so, please, make yourselves at home.’

  ‘That’s lucky, Tray. We will. It’ll be nice to have the place to ourselves.’

  ‘Let me get you a drink. What would you like?’ Andrew asked.

  ‘A coffee would be great. It’s been a long drive. Those roads are dreadful in the dark.’

  Andrew nodded. ‘You soon get used to it. Milk? Sugar?’

  ‘Yes, please. One sugar.’

  ‘I’ll be right back,’ Andrew said. As he wandered into the kitchen he could hear Tracy giving Phil the well-rehearsed patter.

  Andrew filled the kettle and flicked on the power switch. He prepared three cups as he imagined Tray continuing the spiel. By now she’d be telling him the story of how the cliff edge got its name and how that in turn inspired the name for their B&B. For a while they worried that the name was putting people off. Maybe people thought it was some kind of brothel or a place for swingers, or doggers.

  The kettle boiled and Andrew finished making the drinks. Loading them onto a Leek tea tray they had bought from a gift shop in town, he carried them through to the living room.

  Apart from the popping and snapping of the fire it was strangely quiet, and that wasn’t like his wife at all.

  The tray slipped from his grasp and the cups smashed on the flagstone floor.

  Phil was standing behind his wife with a knife at her throat.

  Andrew opened his mouth, but no words came out.

  ‘Listen very carefully,’ Phil said as if he was talking to a child. ‘You will sit over there on that chair with your hands in your pockets.’ Phil jerked his head toward a Windsor chair which sat near a computer desk.

  Andrew hesitated for a moment, but soon moved when he saw Tray flinch as the satin finished knife scraped against her slightly wrinkled neck. ‘Okay, okay. Don’t hurt her,’ he said holding his hands up in surrender.

  Once A.J. was sat down, Phil manoeuvred Tray towards the fireplace. He reached down and took the brass poker off its stand and let it dangle in his left hand. ‘Move!’ he hissed and used his body to push Tracy at her husband. She stumbled and the razor sharp knife sliced into her skin, producing beads of crimson life upon its black surface.

  ‘Don’t hurt her, please,’ Andrew pleaded.

  Phil threw the woman to one side, sending her into an occasional table, knocking a potted plant to the floor.

  In a sudden burst of speed the guest rushed forward and swung the poker up across his body. Andrew closed his eyes and tried to turn his head away, but it connected solidly with his jaw, sending him and the chair toppling backwards. Phil leapt upon the stricken man and brought the poker down on Andrew again and again and again.

  Having finished, he staggered back and let the poker slide from his grasp. It clattered to the cold, stone floor. ‘That was your own fault, you idiot. I was only going to tie you to the chair. I wasn’t interested in hurting you, but you had to, you went and had to….’

  Andrew didn’t respond, he didn’t move. He was too afraid that the maniac would start on his wife.

  ‘You’ve killed him!’ Tray screamed, her face covered with compost and tears.

  Frozen in fear, Andrew watched as the psycho tossed the knife to his left hand and then back to the right like a tennis player with a racquet.

  ‘He’s not dead. Look, his chest is moving.’ Phil pointed toward her fallen husband and then back at her, his face one of open honesty. ‘I took no pleasure in that, believe me. You, on the other hand…’ Tracy scuttled back, cutting her hand on a broken piece of pottery as she did so. ‘You are a woman and I have no problem hurting you.’ Phil knelt down onto the floor and began to crawl after her on his hands and knees. He stopped. ‘Nice,’ he said nodding his head appreciatively.

  Tracy stopped moving, frozen by the sudden change in attitude and tone.

  ‘Under floor heating,’ he said. Tracy almost smiled for a moment, thrown off balance by the strange remark. ‘I wouldn’t want you to get cold, would I,’ Phil added with a wolfish grin. Tracy screamed as she scrambled away from him as fast as she could.

  Andrew couldn’t watch anymore. He couldn’t be a coward and stand by as his wife be violated. With a roar, he charged at his attacker. The sound came to a sudden halt when he received a crippling blow to his nose.

  Darkness swallowed Andrew as his wife’s screams filled his ears.

  Seventy-One

  She wasn’t as young as Sarah, or as fit, but Tray had served her purpose, and served it well. Wolf-Man watched, a smug expression on his face as he saw the broken woman sob in the corner as she tried to cover herself up with the remains of her ripped clothes. She’d put up a fight at first, and a good one too, but she had soon given in to the inevitability of it all. The blade had helped, of course. The floor was still hard and uncomfortable despite its warmth.

  Wolf-Man walked over to Andrew, who was still unconscious and lying half under the desk. The piece of furniture was huge, a statement. One of those large mahogany monstrosities with the rectangle of green leather in the middle for you to write on. Taking hold of A.J’s ankles, Wolf-Man unceremoniously dragged the B&B owner across the floor. Then, removing his belt, Wolf-Man flipped the man over and used it to tie his arms behind his back. Crossing the room, he grabbed Tracy by her dyed hair and pulled her across the floor on her hands and knees as she whimpered pathetically. He threw her body onto the sofa so her face was buried in the mound of cushions. She offered no resistance as Wolf-Man took one of her wrists and then the other, and tied her up. Confident that the woman would do nothing, Wolf-Man turned and left.

  The night air was really beginning to chill now. He looked at his watch. It was almost ten o’clock. The entertainment must have taken longer than he thought. Time flies when you’re having fun.

  Crossing to his car, he peeked through the window. The girl was still slumped across the back seat. Unlocking the boot, he threw it open. The man inside didn’t move. Wolf-Man slammed the boot closed, locked it, and walked over to the garage. It was locked too. Perfect.

  Wolf-Man went back inside and turned right into the kitchen. A quick look around revealed a boot room, no doubt for the walkers muddy footwear, and then two other doors. One was clearly the back door. Grasping the handle of the other, he pulled and, as he expected, it opened into the garage. It was empty, save for the obligatory oil stain in the middle of the floor and the usual boxes of junk. He made a quick check that there were no tools or anything that A.J. and Tray could use to help themselves escape. Andrew seemed the type to have his own ‘den’ – a ‘man-shed’ where he kept all his tools.

  Returning back through the house, Wolf-Man jumped into his car, drove it forward, and up tight against the garage door. There was no way they get out now. When he returned to the warm living room, Tracy was not where he left her. Wolf-Man began to panic, but then he re-evaluated the feeling. No, it wasn’t panic. It was excitement. It meant he would have a new chase and he could fr
ighten her once again. He would have to think of new ways to hurt and humiliate her.

  Then he heard her sobbing. She had moved over to her husband and was holding him. It was a touching scene. He would have cared, been moved even, if he had any feelings, but God had removed them and He had done it because He loved him. How could he fulfil his True Mission without this boon that He had granted? Slowly, like a hunter stalking his prey, he walked over to the married couple.

  ‘Please, please leave us be. What have we done?’

  He didn’t answer her impassioned pleas. He looked down at her like she was an insect to be studied.

  ‘If it’s money you want, we don’t have much. We have some petty cash in the kitchen and some of these paintings and antiques are worth a bit. But, please, please leave us alone.’

  Wolf-Man bent down and stroked Tracy’s hair. She let out a scream as his hand snapped shut and seized her hair. When he was satisfied he had a firm grip, he dragged her through the house and tossed her into the garage, her torn blouse now smeared with the sticky tar-like stain from the hard concrete floor. He returned a few minutes later with her husband.

  Leaving the couple in the garage, Wolf-Man went back to his car and looked in the front passenger’s foot well. He had brought a selection of climbing equipment as he intended to enjoy some action on the rock face as well as well as the main event he had planned.

  Returning to the garage, he took a coil of rope out of a canvas bag, threw it over the central beam in the pitched roof, and began to string up his two captives.

  Seventy-Two

  Wolf-Man sat in front of the fire and sipped at his cup of coffee. It was one o’clock in the morning and he had finally managed to put his feet up. As soon as he relaxed, he jumped back to his feet, filled with a nervous energy. He threw another couple of logs onto the fire and began to wonder how he would destroy all the evidence of what he would do here. Burning the house down was the logical choice. There was no one around for miles, something he was sure was appealing to A.J. and Tray once, but not anymore. It would take a while for any kind of response.

  He sat back down, crossed his ankles and got comfortable. Life had a funny way of working out, although in this case it wasn’t all that funny, or unexplained. God was watching over him. He hadn’t cancelled the booking for the weekend after all, and as it turned out it was a good job he hadn’t. He had to abandon his house, just in case the police followed him there, but luckily he had the perfect place to run to. It was typical that Freeman and Paul would interrupt him – again!

  He had a genuine affection for Alex, he decided. He seemed a likeable teacher, not filled with the airs and graces that some of them had. And Paul, well he’d known Paul for the last few years. His daughter, Char, was his sister’s best friend. She was a good kid, and all of this was about her – was for her – even.

  Wolf-Man wondered if God would punish him for loving her, one of the lambs he had been sent to slaughter, and putting her before his True Mission. In the end, he knew he had to treat them all the same. She had betrayed his love and slept with another man, and now would be bringing a bastard child, a slight to God, into the world. Yes, even though he loved her, he would have to punish her too.

  Wolf-Man crossed his ankles the other way and thought about the earlier events of the evening. Having found the keys to A.J. and Tray’s house, he’d unlocked the garage door from the inside and set about emptying his car. First he'd got the girl out. She had been groggy from the Special K he had given her, which he had got weeks ago from one of his many suppliers at the Market Square. He knew the ketamine would wear off soon, so he'd taken her straight upstairs and found the double room. Andrew and Tracy had certainly done a nice job of their little palace. The room had that romantic olde worlde feel about it, complete with a jug of water and a ceramic bowl for washing your face. He didn’t see why hill walkers and climbers would want all this fancy shite though.

  Using a fifty metre polymide rope, he tied her carefully to the bed, taking his time so he could enjoy every inch and every knot. He'd stuffed an old sock into her mouth and slipped a black sack, like the one he had used on James Harrington, over her head.

  Finally, he had crouched beside her and said: ‘I’m sorry I’ve got to do this. You’re so young and so pretty, but you really shouldn’t have done it. Now I will have to punish you, too.’ He kissed her gently on the head before he left.

  Then he had seen to the man in the boot. He had been much easier to deal with. He’d been his captive for, what, over two days now? He opened the boot of the car and slapped his captive’s face through the black sack.

  ‘Get up,’ he'd ordered the man, who simply did as he was told. He'd not eaten for two days and having been stuck in a boot for six hours or so, he had been rendered weak and stiff. Wolf-Man became impatient and grabbed the man’s shirt and pulled him, sending him crashing to the gravel. His hands were tied behind his back so he was unable to break his fall. He landed heavily and didn’t move.

  ‘Get up!’

  The man brought his legs up under him and, after several attempts, managed to get himself back on his feet. Taking his arm, as if he was guiding a blind person, Wolf-Man had taken the staggering figure into the house, leaving huge gouges in the gravel where he had stumbled and dragged his toes through it.

  Wolf-Man slowly finished his coffee as well as his memories. Yes, it had been a long day, but it wasn’t over yet.

  There was a loud pop from the fire and Wolf-Man awoke with a jerk. Despite the coffee, he must have fallen asleep. The sofa was very comfortable and the heat from the fire had obviously relaxed him. He looked at his watch and said, ‘Time to get moving, old friend.’ It was three o’clock in the morning. He’d been asleep for two hours.

  Wolf-Man looked down at his feet and then the man he had been resting them on. Once inside the house, he had forced his captive to curl into a ball and then strapped him up with rope. It was only then that he realized the bundle would make a good foot rest and he had used him ever since.

  Wolf-Man kicked his male prisoner hard in the ribs. The man rolled over like a seven-year-old practising gymnastics in primary school. Only the tiniest sound escaped his lips.

  ‘I said “wake up”. It’s time to end this.’ Wolf-Man crouched down beside the bound figure and pulled the sack off his head.

  Seventy-Three

  Richard Rollins stared back at Wolf-Man, his immaculate hair greasy and unkempt. His usual shaved features had three days’ worth of facial hair. Above all, his face looked hollow and tortured. But the torture was just about to begin.

  Wolf-Man went to remove the sock from Rollins’ mouth but thought better of it. He smiled down at his prisoner and said in a calm, reassuring voice, ‘I’m going to remove the ropes now. You’re going to need all your strength to complete the coming task.’

  It suddenly struck Wolf-Man that Rollins was like the anti-Messiah, the Man of Sin. Rollins would endure his own form of The Passion, but, unlike Jesus, he would suffer for his own sins. He was a molester of children. A pervert.

  While he had been his captive in the cellar, Wolf-Man had taken Rollins’ mobile phone. His contacts list was full of women. He had taken great delight in individually texting each one, not including the ones he knew Rollins worked with. He told them a choice of lies: he'd contracted an STI and that they should get to the doctor quick: that he’d slept with their mothers; that he'd posted a secret video of them on numerous adult sites. He’d had quite a long text conversation with some, and had to tell others it was a joke when they threatened to come round to Rollins’ house with their brother or new boyfriend.

  Wolf-Man unravelled the ropes from around his victim’s body and rubbed Rollins’s arms and legs to get some circulation back in them. He then retied Richard’s arms behind his back and helped the defenceless teacher onto the sofa.

  ‘I’ll give you half an hour to get your circulation back while I have another cup of coffee. I suggest you practice standing up and
down for a while and then do some pacing back and forth before the fire. It’ll be the last heat you’ll ever feel, not including the fires of damnation, of course. I won’t be long, and if you try to escape, I’ll kill you,’ Wolf-Man said, his tone like that of a loving father saying goodnight to his child.

  Wolf-Man returned from the kitchen with his coffee in one hand and a file folder, which he had picked up from a dresser in the hallway, in the other. He placed the drink on the desk and checked that Rollins was doing what he was told. Turning his attention to the folder, Wolf-Man flipped it open.

  It contained the usual stuff you find in a B&B - information about local attractions, pub menus and information about the local area. Near the back, he found a map of the rock face, Devil’s Brow, which was a few hundred yards behind the building. There was also an information page alongside it that had been typed out by Andrew – it said his name proudly at the bottom like some needy, attention-seeking nine-year-old.

  Wolf-Man leaned against the desk so he could watch Rollins as he read from the folder. ‘Keep moving, Richard,’ he said encouragingly. ‘The trig point we’ll soon be visiting is on top of a rock face called Devil’s Brow. There’s also an accompanying story called The Devil’s Doxie? Want to hear it?’

  Rollins didn’t answer, he was busy shuffling backwards and forwards in front of the fire. Wolf-Man smiled, the man’s movements were definitely getting easier and more flowing.

  ‘The rock face, Devil’s Brow,’ Wolf-Man began, ‘which is situated behind our home, derives its name from its shape and the many deaths associated with it. However, an eighteenth-century folk tale, called Devil’s Doxie, is far more interesting. The owner of a nearby farm had a wayward daughter, who was known to lay with many men.’ Wolf-Man stopped reading and smiled at the way Andrew had phrased it. Some things never changed, especially where women were concerned.