The Girl in the Empty Room

by Neil Randall

  In the early hours of the morning, a second body belonging to what is thought to be another young woman in her mid- to late twenties, was found washed up on the town’s east beach. Because the injuries found on the second woman appear identical to those found on the first, a police spokesman has refused to rule out a direct link, “After rigorous D.N.A. testing, we can confirm that the first body discovered on the beach did not belong to missing mother of two, Jacqueline Franklin. And while the investigation into the incident so far has yet to yield a positive identification, we now believe that the deceased may not have been a U.K. national, but will not know for sure until we hear back from our international colleagues.”

  Understandably, local residents are extremely concerned by these unsettling developments. With so much happening in the area at present: missing persons, dead bodies, the outbreak of a mysterious infection, a quarantine zone, and with the town being closed for the best part of three days, we can only hope and pray for a swift return to normality.

  Anyone with information regarding either unidentified body, please contact the police immediately.

  Steven Bland (Deputy-Editor)

  Both Hepworth and Priestly shot to their feet when Chief Medical Officer Jake Jones walked down the corridor.

  “Here.” He handed Hepworth a sealed plastic evidence bag containing the deceased’s final belongings. “When her body was discovered the young woman was wearing a pair of jeans, a woollen pullover, T-shirt and underwear. From a preliminary examination of the corpse, I cannot immediately confirm a cause of death. But, like the first body, this young woman had suffered a serious injury to the back of the head. If we take into account the fact that two corpses have been washed up on the same stretch of beach in such a short space of time, both suffering severe trauma to the skull, I think we can safely rule out any accidental collision with a boat propeller after drowning.”

  “So what do you think happened to them, then?”

  “Until I do a full autopsy, Dan, that’s a difficult question to answer. But if I was to hazard a guess I’d say that both women had been scalped, dying of severe blood loss before they were dumped at sea.”

  “Scalped!” said Priestly.

  “I know it sounds rather macabre, but it’s the only wound consistent with this type of trauma.” Jones gestured to the plastic bag. “In the back pocket of the jeans, officers at the scene found what appears to be part of a strange puppet, animal bones held together with string.”

  “Really?” Hepworth darted a significant look at Priestly. “Thanks, Jake. We’ll let you get back to it now. If you find anything unusual during the autopsy, please contact either myself or Detective Priestly straight away.”

  “Will do.”

  After watching Jones disappear down the same corridor, Hepworth unsealed the evidence bag and pulled out the animal bone puppet parts.

  Priestly was first to speak. “I’d bet my house that those bones came straight from Bogdanovic’s place, by the gate.”

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking,” said Hepworth. “Come on. Time we paid him another visit.”

  ***

  When Hepworth drove up the dirt-track he didn’t immediately notice that a shiny new metal gate had been installed across the entrance, and almost crashed straight into it.

  “Shit!” He slammed down hard on the brakes, jolting them both forward. “Sorry, Di. I didn’t expect to…I didn’t notice the new gate there.”

  “Me neither.”

  Both got out of the car and walked over to the gate. Wedged in between the top rails was a piece of plywood, on it, painted in neat, slanting letters: Goodbye, In Memoriam, From the Joker to the Thief. But beyond the gate, everything was just how it was before; nothing had been moved or removed: the two caravans, pigpen, outbuildings, phone box, rows and rows of gnomes, stuffed crocodiles, all of which suggested that Bogdanovic, if really planning to leave, hadn’t done so just yet.

  “Let’s have a little look around,” said Hepworth. “Let’s see if Mr Bogdanovic really has left town.”

  After opening the gate, driving in and parking up, they knocked on each caravan door – no response. They tried both door handles but neither would yield, to the extent that the doors themselves appeared to have been welded shut.

  “Look,” said Priestly, examining the door-frame on the first caravan. “Something’s not right here. There doesn’t appear to be much of a gap, like he’s sealed the door shut from the inside.”

  “How odd.” Hepworth gave the door a push, confirming this. “But if he’s done that from the inside then how did he get out again?” He walked around to the side window, the only one that hadn’t been boarded-up, but it was covered in such a thick layer of grime he couldn’t really see anything other than the bulky outline of the furniture, certainly not a human shape moving around or collapsed out on the floor.

  “Maybe we should force one of the doors or windows open, break in somehow.” Priestly turned and looked around the yard. “Hey, why don’t we grab one of those metal stakes from over there?”

  Hepworth took a stake from the barbeque pit, wedged it crowbar-like under a piece of plywood covering one of the windows, and tried to wrench it away from the caravan’s outer shell.

  “Jesus!” he said, straining, only managing to force out one single solitary nail, so firmly had the wood been secured.

  “Here.” Priestly leaned her weight against the caravan, to give him more leverage – but it didn’t seem to do any good. “Maybe I should get another stake.”

  As she rushed over and pulled another stake out of the ground, she felt something soft and warm land on her hair, face and arms – like a strange sprinkle of snow. She looked up. Sparkly, twinkling snowflake-like shapes were falling from the sky, directly over the heads of the black and white gnomes.

  “What?” she mouthed, looking on as the gnomes blinked their eyes, yawned, rolled their necks and flexed their arms, as if shaking themselves from hibernation, as if these inanimate objects were slowly coming to life.

  Dropping the stake to the ground, she dashed back over to Hepworth.

  “Dan, you better –” the sound of hundreds of tiny almost indistinct voices breaking into song cut her short.

  Hepworth swung round.

  “What the –!”

  The army of gnomes was now marching towards them in neat ordered columns, like toy soldiers infused with a magical life force all their own, singing:

  The Boge, the Boge is not a real man

  The Boge, the Boge will kill you out of hand

  The Boge, the Boge will make you understand

  The Boge, the Boge is the bogeyman

  “What do we do?” Priestly looked right and left for something, anything to defend herself with.

  Before Hepworth could respond the first row of gnomes leapt towards them, hurtling through the air, tiny fists raised. Thud, thud, thud, they landed on the police officers, grabbing onto their clothes, scratching their faces and necks with razor sharp nails, biting into wrists and ankles.

  “Get ’em, lads,” the others yelled.

  “That’s it, hit ’em where it hurts.”

  “Kill ’em, take ’em down.”

  Recoiling, both Hepworth and Priestly tried to swat the miniature attackers away, but no sooner had they repelled one advance, then another set of gnomes propelled themselves forward, with all the venom and frenzy of the first wave.

  Ducking and diving, shaking gnomes from their arms and legs, they tried to run back to the car, but another battalion of gnomes appeared from behind the caravans, blocking their path. Grabbing the stake that had been wedged in the window frame, Hepworth rushed forward and swung it around and around, windmill fashion, knocking scores of gnomes off their feet, knocking heads clean from shoulders, arms and legs from sockets, clearing a path over to the wooden outbuildings.

  “Over there,” he said to Priestly. “Climb up, use the wall. If we can get to a high point, chances are these little bastards won
’t be able to follow us.”

  But as she tried to get away even more gnomes appeared, singing the same chant as before:

  The Boge, the Boge is not a real man

  The Boge, the Boge will kill you out of hand

  The Boge, the Boge will make you understand

  The Boge, the Boge is the bogeyman

  Frantic now, Priestly kicked out her legs, sending great swathes of tiny snarling attackers toppling over onto their backs, while Hepworth smashed gnome after gnome to pieces with the flailing metal stake. But still their efforts were in vain, for as soon as they destroyed an entire batch of gnomes, they either miraculously repaired themselves or were replaced with another wave of battalion strength. Before they knew it the police officers were almost worn out, backed into a corner, and Hepworth had no other option than to draw his gun and start shooting, cutting down dozens of gnomes, blowing off even more arms, legs and heads, reducing them to chalky pieces of rubble.

  “He’s got a shooter,” shouted one gnome, “scarper, lads.”

  “Ooh, ah, that’s not fair. Come on, boys, let’s get out of here.”

  As quickly as they had appeared the retreating gnomes started to disappear in puffs of pink smoke, until all that was left were piles and piles of crumbly plaster remains, strewn across the yard.

  “My God,” panted Priestly, sinking down to her haunches. “Did that really just happen?”

  Hepworth, breathing just as heavily, took out a handkerchief and wiped it around his face and neck.

  “Yes. I think it did.” He stared at the ground, prodding a decimated gnome with the toe of his shoe. “I don’t believe – “ as he turned to Priestly, he saw the huge dark monstrous shape of a crocodile lunge forward, its wide open devastating jaws clamping down on her shoulder and neck, almost ripping her in two. “Diane!”

  But his warning words were far too late, the crocodile had already torn into Priestly, tossing her bloodied body to the ground, and was now frenziedly chomping its way through her sternum, crunching through bone, ripping into flesh, and all Hepworth could do was look on in horror.

  Frozen to the spot, he heard a snorting rasp, and another crocodile, all of thirty foot in length, appeared, leering up at him.

  “Jesus Christ!” Instinctively he aimed and fired at the crocodile, but the magazine only clicked – the gun was empty. Dropping it to the ground, he turned and ran towards the car. All the time he could hear the gigantic reptile’s talons and swishing tail scrape across the dusty ground, concrete then shingle. But somehow he managed to wrench the door open, swing his body into the car, then slam the door shut behind him, just as the crocodile bashed into the side of the vehicle, making it shudder and shake, pitch violently from side to side, like it was about to topple over.

  Mastering his panic, Hepworth took his mobile phone out of his pocket.

  “Shit,” he cried, unable to stop his hands from shaking, hitting out at the keypad, scrolling through his contacts, finally finding the number for the local station

  “It’s Detective Inspector Hepworth. I’m up at Bogdanovic’s place…Yes, that’s right. I need immediate assistance. One officer dead at the scene. Get back-up out here as soon as you can. We’ll need tranquilizer guns Two large crocodiles are on the loose, extremely dangerous…That’s right, crocodiles…” a thundering crash reverberated against the side of the car, sending the phone flying from Hepworth’s hand. “Damn!”

  As he scrambled across the seat to retrieve it, he caught sight of both crocodiles, stopped dead, and slowly sat upright again. The first still had Priestley’s mutilated body wedged in its jaws; one of her arms dangling down, the fingers still twitching. Circling the car, the reptiles hissed and snorted, treading their way around, scrunching ominously over shingle, as if sizing up the vehicle, as if deciding on the best way to get inside, to get at him. After a complete circuit, one crocodile went to the passenger side, the other to Hepworth’s.

  “What – What are you doing?”

  In a choreographed series of seismic blows, they bashed great muscular tails into the sides of the car, crumpling metal – crash, bang, crash, bang – inflicting huge dents, making the vehicle shudder and shake, shudder and shake, the windscreen and windows crack, great spider web patterns breaking out across the glass, as if close to shattering. In what felt like seconds, Hepworth’s side of the car had been so badly damaged the battered door had pinioned his leg up against the steering wheel. Had he wanted to move now, he couldn’t have done so. Through another pounding series of whiplash blows, the decimated car was tossed up and over onto its roof, all remaining glass exploding into fragments, blinding Hepworth’s eyes. The last thing he remembered before losing consciousness was feeling a crocodile’s cold scaly snout jab its way in under the shell of the car, trying to burrow him out, trying to get at him for good this time.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  “The other night,” said Katie, “after we spoke on the phone, I did a little more digging around.” She handed Ryan a piece of paper. “Take a look at that.”

  He unfolded the sheet and scanned the dates highlighted with a fluorescent maker.

  “What?” He looked across at her. “What does all of this mean?”

  “Hopefully nothing, hopefully it’s just a load of nonsense that me, a bored housewife, has dreamed up. Only I checked the dates of the killings, from Chief Wanayama’s tribe, the oil worker massacre, to the later copycat murders, where the Boge was first mentioned.”

  “And what did you find out?”

  “In each case, the first set of murders took place on the twenty-ninth of October.”

  “That’s the day Jacqueline went missing.”

  “Exactly. And it doesn’t end there.” She pointed to another set of dates on the piece of paper still open in Ryan’s hands. “I also checked into any unsolved murders over the years, and there are like hundreds of them, across the world – America, Europe, Asia, Australia – starting on that exact day, like little spates, unexplained incidences, cases never closed. I’ve got all the information at home.”

  Ryan took a few moments to take all of this in.

  “Katie, look, I know you mean well, that you’re a top girl, but what you’re saying can’t be possible. It’s like something from a Stephen King book – bloody ghosts and ghouls going around murdering people. It just sounds like superstitious nonsense.”

  “I know that, Ry, but let’s face it, some pretty weird, unexplainable shit has happened already, hasn’t it? So let’s just suppose that the vast majority of what I’ve just said is nonsense, okay? But what we can’t dismiss is the fact that me, just an ordinary person, messing around on the internet, has managed to get hold of all this information – because that’s a fact, right?”

  “Yeah, course.”

  “So let’s just assume that the Boge, or someone else ’round here, did the same thing, and you told me yourself, he’s into all kinds of superstitious stuff, just like Jacque is. So perhaps they got talking about all those conspiracy theories one night. Perhaps he completely lost it. Perhaps he got it into his head that he’s the reincarnation of Chief what-ever-his-name-is, and decided to try and recreate all those killings. Perhaps, on a very small scale, he’s trying to exact revenge on people who exploit others, women, especially.”

  “Erm, maybe, but that doesn’t account for why Jacqueline went missing, or why those two women washed up on the beach, or why there’s some contagious infection going around town. I mean, how could he have gone and done something like that – infecting a couple of hundred people with a disease? It’s impossible.”

  “But it’s true, Ry – Jacque has disappeared, two girls have died, and the entire bloody town’s been shut down.” She took a few deep breaths and massaged both temples. “Now, look, Mike’s got the boys till lunch-time. I told him I was going to my mum’s to get some stuff from her freezer, just in case the shops aren’t open today. So we’ve got a couple of hours. What I suggest we do is go up to the Boge’s place,
look around, talk to him – you’re mates, aren’t you? So if he’s got nothing to do with all of this, then he’s not like he’s going to attack us. And if he is a nutcase we’ll just get the hell out of there as quick as we can.”

  They drove in silence, every now and then stealing a glance at each other, as if they both wanted to carry on talking but didn’t quite know how to go about it.

  “You know something,” Ryan said, finally, “I often think back to the time me and Jacque were living together, especially just after the twins were born, and things started to go wrong. This one time I walked in on her in the bedroom. She’d just had a bath and was getting changed, was naked, standing in the front of the mirror, holding her slack stomach, the stretch marks, and her eyes were all red, like she’d been crying. At first, I didn’t say nothing. I just sort of stood there, looking at her. Only she must’ve heard me, ’cause she turns round and says in this really cold, hard, emotionless voice, like a robot or something, “Look what you’ve done to me.”

  ***

  As Katie drove to the end of the dirt-track, she saw Bogdanovic leaned over a shiny new gate, hands working away intently, as if he was trying to remove or fasten something to or from one of the rails. Hearing an approaching engine, he gave a start, turned and ran over to the car, waving his hands above his head, gesturing for her to wind down the window.

  “You can’t come up here,” he panted. “There’s been a…something’s happened.”

  Both Katie and Ryan looked into the yard, seeing an overturned car, all dented up, the bodies of two dead dogs, and loads of debris, like broken concrete, scattered all across the ground.

  “What’s happened, B?” asked Ryan, leaning over Katie.

  Police sirens sounded in the distance.

  Bogdanovic’s face creased anxiously.

  “The – The infection, it’s spread up here, it has, killed my poor ole dogs.” He hitched a thumb over his shoulder. “Best you get out of the car. Come with me. I’ll give you something to protect you from the Black Death.”