by Alex Smith
He gripped the wheel hard with both hands against a sudden rush of anger. His cheeks ached from clenching his teeth and he flexed his jaw. He’d been pathetic.
No more, though. No more.
The cold leached in through the wet windows and he turned the ignition to get the heat on. Then, because he couldn’t face sitting in the car park, he drove onto the street, heading into town. CCTV was the first thing he needed to get hold of. If he made sure the house was covered then at least the next time something happened he’d have a record of it. And once he had a record he could tell Julia, they could go to the police together.
He flicked on his indicator, heading for the mall.
He was struggling back to the car with the CCTV system he’d just bought—a four-camera 1080p kit that came with a three-terabyte drive and wireless access through the Cloud—when his phone buzzed in his pocket. Swearing, he grappled for his keys, almost dropping the box then dropping his keys instead. He wedged the box against his side and scooped them up, unlocking the car and then wrenching open the boot. The hydraulics were on the way out and he had to push it up with the top of his head, throwing the box inside and going for his phone. It had stopped buzzing, and he looked to see a missed call from Adam.
Closing the boot, he climbed inside the car. His hands were too wet to swipe the screen and he scrubbed them on his pants. He thumbed Adam’s name just as the phone buzzed again to tell him he had a voicemail. He decided to let it ring anyway.
“Hey,” said Adam when the call clicked through. “You share that shit with me and don’t answer your phone? Christ, Blake, way to give a guy a heart attack.”
“Sorry,” he said, starting the engine to try to clear the fogged windshield. “Had my hands full.”
“Well I hope you asked her permission first,” said Adam. “Hang on.”
Blake heard him yell something on the other end of the line.
“Sorry, at work, y’know these douchebags have cut us down from a three-man team to a two-man team, and we’re supposed to patrol the whole east wing of the hospital. I mean come on, you know how many crazies there are round here. Fucking backward-arse fucks. What do you want anyway, I’m at work.”
“You called me,” Blake said. “Like a second ago.”
“Oh, shit, yeah. You okay?”
“Fine,” Blake said. “Well, not fine, but you know, not dead. Had a run-in with one of them yesterday, here, at the mall. He was following me and I chased him.”
“Seriously? Jesus, Blake, you get him?”
“No.”
Adam laughed. “Cause you’re the slowest son of a bitch on the planet. At least they know you’re not going to lie down and roll over. Fuck, I shoulda been there, mate.”
“Yeah, no, it’s okay.” Blake opened his mouth to tell him about last night too, then closed it again. He knew exactly what Adam would say: call the police. He couldn’t face the shame of it, either, the knowledge that he’d let the devil man pick up his kid, hold him, sing to him, then toss him away. No man—no father—should have let that happen. His cheeks burned and he turned down the heating. “It was nothing. You okay?”
“Sure, I’m great, but I’m not the one being hunted by a psychopath. Oh, yeah, that’s what I called about. You said this guy carved something into the door? A symbol? Right?”
“Yeah,” Blake said. “A circle, triangle inside, little circles around the outside of the triangle, with tails. Like a flower or something. It’s weird. You know something about it?”
“No, but Google probably does.”
Blake’s heart sank a few inches in his chest.
“Tried it already, nothing.”
“Oh, right, hang on again.” This time Adam let loose a string of expletives to somebody on the other end of the phone that made Blake smile. “Fuck’s sake. Yeah, sorry mate, thought it was worth a suggestion, that image thing can be quite good.”
“Image thing?” Blake said.
“Yeah, the image search. You drag a photo in and it searches for that specific image, or something like it. You didn’t try it?”
“No, never heard of it.” Blake was already wondering if he could remember what the mark looked like, if he could somehow use his phone to search.
“You mean you just typed ‘circle triangle thing’ into Google? Jesus, Blake, you’re supposed to be the smart one. Go do it, you never know. Might turn out to be the logo for some reality TV show or something.”
“Cool, thanks man. Good luck with the patrols and stuff.”
“Cheers, good luck with crazy man stuff.”
Adam hung up, and Blake stared at his phone, opening up the internet browser then navigating to Google. Sure enough, there was a little camera icon in the search bar, but he had no way of inputting the image into it. He could probably remember it if he sat down and tried, but it would be easier to take a photo of it and use that. He slung his phone onto the passenger seat and put the car in gear, pulling out of the car park. He’d have to drive out of town, which was annoying. It would take forever. But he’d only just nosed into traffic when he remembered that his front door at home hadn’t been the only thing vandalised. He cut across the lanes then did a U-turn, heading for his office.
Thirty-Three
Blake took the back way in, walking past the mailroom then down the cold, concrete stairs that only ever served as a fire escape. Harold had stopped calling half an hour or so ago—the last of his fourteen calls going unanswered at 9:47—but he’d be stalking the corridors like a phantom, ready to pounce on Blake as soon as he showed up.
There were a few people on his floor, but nobody really acknowledged him other than a vague smile and an occasional nod. He hadn’t made many friends in the department, the same way he hadn’t made many friends outside of it. He just wasn’t much of a social creature. Being on death’s door, and having to think so hard about how to say goodbye, made you frightened of forming bonds. Blake wouldn’t have been able to identify half a dozen of the people who worked down here with him if their names hadn’t been written on the doors.
He found his, Blake Barton, Therapist, and crouched down to get a better look at the mark that had been carved into the painted wood. It was about the size of a small plate, and deep. Like the one at home, this had been done with some fury—the pattern messy and uneven, as if finesse had been far less important than speed. Splinters jutted from the wood like scraps of broken bone, and Blake found himself wondering if it was a clue to his own brutal death. Would they set about him with knives, would they gouge chunks from him like they had with the door?
He cast a nervous look around, then pulled out his phone and snapped off a couple of pictures. He fumbled his way back to the browser and tried to reload Google but there was no reception down here.
“Dammit,” he muttered, then sensed a shape beside him. He jerked away, only to see another therapist scuttle past. The woman—he thought her name was Anne or Fran or something—gave Blake a concerned glance as she moved up the hall. “Hi,” he called weakly, then pulled out his keys and let himself into his office.
It could have been a million years since he had last set foot in here, and the feeling of intrusion caught him by surprise. It was as if another Blake owned this space, this job, these memories. He felt as though he was breaking in, not just to a room but to a life, and he felt a pang of sadness for it, as if he’d walked into a childhood bedroom. As an afterthought, he locked the door behind him, then pushed through the clutter to the untidy desk—still missing its photos. He booted up the PC and sat while he waited, spinning from side to side in the chair.
There was a USB wire already attached to the machine—Blake’s phone was always running out of charge towards the end of the day—and he plugged in the phone. After a few seconds of horrified rattling, the computer managed to pull up an image browser—all photos of Julia and Connor, grinning. That, too, was another life. Even if he made it out of this, even if he found his way through with them at his side, nothing would
ever be the same. He touched Connor’s face with his fingertips, then scrolled to the picture of the mark.
It had only just started uploading to Google when his office door thundered in its frame.
“Blake?” came Harold’s muted shout. The knob rattled. “Blake, open this door.”
“Fuck you, Harold,” he shouted back, the words out of his mouth before he knew they were even coming. He clamped a hand to his lips, then spluttered a laugh into his fingers. Man, that had felt good. The knocks stopped and Blake could picture Harold out there sputtering in shock, his cheeks boiling, his moustache twitching. He laughed again, something bubbling up, uncontrollable.
“Excuse me?” Harold roared. “This is outrageous. I have had enough, Blake, you’re done here. I demand that you open this door.”
“I said fuck you, Harold!” he bellowed back. “Go fuck a fucking fuck.”
“I’m calling security,” Harold said, twisting the handle again. Then his footsteps faded into the quiet hum of the building. He would, too, Blake knew. Which didn’t give him long. He studied the screen, watching Google do its thing, then the page changed and he was presented with a cluster of images, all strangely familiar.
He clicked on the first, a photograph of a similar rough carving in wood. It linked through to a community care website, mixed with photographs of graffiti and smashed bus shelters. There was a line of text underneath that read Bradwell Avenue, Cromer, sometime between 4th and 5th July. A smaller image next to it showed the same mark from further away. A walnut coloured door with a boarded-up glass panel, bronze handle and letterbox, and the same image gouged into the wood. There was no more information, and Blake scrolled up to the top of the page to see NORFOLK VANDALISED in massive letters.
“Got a complaint,” Blake read aloud. “Email us, and help keep your county vandal free!”
It didn’t give him much, so he clicked back and went to the next image. At first he thought it was an illustration, the colours were so vivid, but when the page loaded he found himself looking at a photograph of a young man, arm outstretched to the camera. The same mark was carved into his flesh, halfway up his forearm. It looked fresh, parts of the incision still oozing blood. The man stood alone, wearing an expression like he’d just necked a whole bottle of tequila. He was smiling proudly, displaying the mark like it was an accomplishment. Blake saw blood on the fingers of his other hand, wondered if he’d done it himself.
He scrolled down the page, realising that it was an old MySpace account—from the days before Facebook and Twitter. It was a mess of images and music tracks, but there wasn’t any personal information. Even the guy’s name was just a series of letters and numbers, Triii23. He looked at the photo again, at the look of pride on the guy’s face. Was he connected to all this? Was he another one of the devil man’s recruits? He didn’t look particularly dirty, his hair seemed clean. What little of the background Blake could make out was dark and out of focus, a fire of some kind blazing just past the guy’s hip.
Frustrated, Blake clicked back onto the search page, selecting the next image. The thumbnail looked like a carving in wood too, with what might have been a disused indoor swimming pool in the background, a dingy cellar, but the link was broken, taking him to an error page. He retreated again, clicking the next. The page that loaded up was from the website of the local newspaper, the Eastern Daily Press, and when Blake read the headline it was as if something had sucked all of the oxygen from his office, leaving him gulping like a landed fish.
FOUR DEAD IN THETFORD FOREST.
The temperature had plummeted and he rubbed his arms, shivering hard. He grabbed the mouse again, scrolling down the page, ignoring the text and just looking for that image.
It was there, in the appendix of photographs that followed the bulk of the text. A big, mustard-yellow door, ajar. The carving here was bigger and neater. Or maybe that was just the poor quality of the photo, Blake couldn’t be sure. There was no denying it was the same mark, though. He squinted. One of the circles on the triangle looked weirdly like a 6.
A six.
He suddenly saw it, the pattern. The marks on the triangle weren’t little ovals with tails, they were all sixes, each one pointing outwards to the circle. Six, six, six. Six days, six hours, six minutes. He was amazed he hadn’t seen it before.
He returned to the top of the page. The article was from three years ago, nearly three and half, because it was dated in May. He read the by-line—Police in Norfolk investigate the murder of a mother and her three children in Thetford—then looked at the main image. It showed a large living room, a horseshoe sofa, a body bag on the floor. The picture was in black and white and it was easy to see why—oil-black stains covered everything, pooling on the carpet beneath the bodies and streaked over the walls. You couldn’t show carnage like that in full colour.
Blake sat forward, his nose almost against the screen. He wrapped his arms around his knees, desperate to hold on to something. His shivers were those of a man who’s just been pulled from a frozen lake. They seemed to radiate from a vast, dark emptiness inside him.
The northern edge of Thetford Forest was sealed off last night after residents discovered the bodies of a local family in their home. Elizabeth Nevill and her three young children were all the victims of what appears to be the worst mass murder in the county in fifty years. The husband, Luis Nevill, is currently missing.
Somewhere, a million miles away, Blake heard footsteps pounding towards his office door.
Mr Nevill, a successful interior designer who worked from home, had recently moved his family to the area from Yorkshire. Elizabeth was a shift worker at Centerparcs, where colleagues have been quick to voice their shock and horror. Two of their children—Vincent and Michael—attended the same school, while Alice had recently started nursery. The family was much loved in the area, and the deaths of Elizabeth and her children have come as a huge shock to everyone who knew them.
A fist rapped on the door.
“Blake, I’ve called security,” Harold said, his voice like a kettle coming to boil. “I’m giving you one last chance to open the door.”
Blake scrolled to the bottom of the article, too much information to take in. He thought about printing it but he didn’t have time. Instead, he found the social media links and emailed it to himself. He clicked back to Google, scanning the rest of the images and wondering just how many were crime-scene photos. Then, when the pounding started again, he clicked the browser shut and pushed himself back from the desk.
“Okay, okay,” he said, walking to the door and opening it. Harold had done as promised, standing there between two security guards who looked fat and bored. One was picking his nose. Harold looked like a man on the verge of exploding, and he jabbed a finger at Blake.
“You’re finished,” he said, flecks of spittle landing on Blake’s face.
“We got a problem here?” said one of the guards. Blake shook his head, pulling the office door closed behind him.
“I was just leaving,” he said. He leaned into Harold, looked him right in the eye, and said, “I quit.”
He spun on his heels, the corridor spinning with him in a sudden rush of vertigo. Harold’s voice chased him.
“You don’t quit, Blake, you’re fired, you hear me? Fired!”
But by the time Blake had climbed the stairs and pushed out into the car park, he was grinning.
Thirty-Four
It didn’t last.
Blake shouldered his way through the rain and dived into the car, running his hands through his wilting hair. Everything was damp and cold, his body still shivering uncontrollably. It was partly the shock of what he’d found, partly the adrenaline run-off from confronting Harold, partly the fact that he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had something to eat. It took him a couple of attempts to get the key into the ignition, switching the heater up to full.
Only when the warmth started to creep back into his limbs did he fully appreciate the stupidity of what he
’d just done. That was his job, the same job he’d had for over six years now, the job he’d flushed down the toilet in the space of ten minutes. Harold would never let him have it back. The old man was a vengeful arsehole when he wanted to be, and he had a long memory. No, Blake could spend the rest of his life following Harold on his hands and knees and that still wouldn’t be enough. If, come Thursday, the devil didn’t show up at his door, if this did turn out to be some awful hoax, then he was screwed.
Only, it wasn’t a hoax. If that hadn’t been clear before, then it sure as hell was now. Blake pulled his phone from his pocket and loaded his emails, opening the article he had forwarded to himself. He started where he left off, muttering the story beneath his breath to make sure he didn’t miss anything.
“Initial enquiries indicate that the deaths occurred sometime between Thursday evening and Friday morning. The police were called to the scene by a friend of the family, who became suspicious when Elizabeth and the children failed to show up at school. It was then that Norfolk police entered the premises to discover all four bodies spread across the property. Mrs Nevill was found dead in the sitting room. The bodies of two of the children were found upstairs in one bedroom, beneath a bed, while the youngest child was discovered inside her wardrobe. No details have been released on the causes of death.”
Blake stopped reading, rubbing his eyes until fireworks flashed across his vision. He could see it all too well, Elizabeth screaming for her kids to hide as she tried to fight an intruder in their living room. Had it been the same guy? Had the devil walked into that house and murdered Elizabeth and her children? Had he given the husband, Luis, the same choice that he’d given Blake?