Six Days, Six Hours, Six Minutes

by Alex Smith

  There was no glass on the floor, which was weird. Blake studied the window, not just broken but cleared away, not a splinter of glass left in the frame. Would they have done that when they were sealing the house up? Maybe, but Blake didn’t think so. Someone else had been here.

  The room’s single door stood ajar, a strip of pitch-black visible through the crack. Why the hell hadn’t he brought a torch?

  Idiot.

  He pulled his phone from his pocket, turning on the flashlight function. He walked to the door, easing it open, and it hit him—a smell so dense, so foul that it was as if it had been a physical blow. He almost dropped his phone, gasping for air.

  That smell. His smell.

  The devil man was here.

  Thirty-Six

  Blake clamped a hand to his face, as much to hold in a scream as to keep out the smell. His back hit the wall to the side of the window and he pressed himself against it, trying to press himself into it, knowing how much noise he’d made climbing up here. Had the man heard him? Was he stalking down the corridor right now, a knife clenched in one filthy hand, that psychopathic stare burning through the dark?

  Blake trapped the air in his lungs, commanding every cell in his body to lie still. His heart refused, beating hard, churning his blood butter thick. How could his pulse be so loud?

  Past it, the house was quiet. Unnaturally quiet. It seemed, like him, to be trying too hard not to make any noise. There was a whisper-soft tapping from outside the door, like a knuckle brushing against wood, and Blake almost hurled himself through the window out into the day. He planted his feet, chewing the fingers in his mouth, please, please, please.

  Nothing else, just that rhythmic tap and the purr of the rain on the roof. Surely if the man was inside then he’d have charged up here by now. He didn’t seem the kind of guy who’d skulk around. Even so, when Blake started to move again he did so at a snail’s pace, creeping across the room and freezing every time a floorboard so much as creaked. He reached the door and eased it open, the squealing hinges surely loud enough to wake the dead.

  Beyond was a corridor, a carpet that could have been brown or red or purple—the light from his phone wasn’t enough to reveal it. Wallpaper hung in strips, like it had been savaged. There must have been a hole in the roof because a steady stream of water dripped into a pool on the sodden carpet—tap tap tap. The smell was even thicker out here, sitting on Blake’s tongue. He could have been right there again, trapped under the devil man’s graveyard reek, and he had to rub his neck against a phantom ache that flared in his spine.

  To the left was a single door, closed. To the right, past another two doors, the corridor darkened into an abyss. Blake cautiously moved to the left, opening the door onto a child’s bedroom. He swung the phone in an arc, seeing a single bed with a Minnie Mouse headboard, a dressing table with a cracked mirror—his reflection making him fumble the phone—and there, in the corner, a white double wardrobe, one door open.

  He didn’t go and look. He thought that if he went anywhere near that thing then a slender, cold hand would snake out and grab his wrist.

  He turned, closing the door behind him and trying once again to force away the image of the man walking into the bedroom, those dead eyes searching for the girl and landing on that wardrobe. How had he killed her? A knife through the chest? A hammer to the skull? Or just those dirty fingers noosed around her neck, ratcheting tight.

  The bedroom on the left must have belonged to Luis and Elizabeth, a huge bed and a bigger wardrobe. There was an en suite too, by the look of things. The wallpaper was faded, a dozen or so pale rectangles where photographs or paintings must have hung. Where had they gone? Who had come to clear it all out after the Nevills had died? And why had they left so much? Blake hovered by the door, one hand gripping the frame. The room was so dark. He felt like an astronaut about to step into space, felt like if he let go now then he’d just float away and keep floating, into the endless, silent night of this house.

  He checked across the hall, seeing a room with two single beds. Posters that had once hung proudly on the wall were now pooled on the mouldering carpet, glimpses of fast cars and football teams. One brother must have been a Norwich City fan, the other had defected to Liverpool. He turned to go then froze, his stomach twisting in a violent circle.

  One of the boys was lying in his bed.

  He was covered by a sheet, but there—a glimpse of his head on the pillow, one eye staring right at Blake.

  The rush of adrenaline that squeezed through Blake seemed enough to burst his arteries. He wasn’t sure how he stayed standing, wasn’t sure how he managed to put one foot in front of the other until he was standing by the bed, wasn’t sure how he gathered the strength to peel that damp, wretched sheet up from the shape beneath.

  There was no boy, just a bundle of old clothes rolled into a boy-sized tube, the bottom half drawn up like a pair of legs. Resting on the pillow was a small rucksack, Disney’s Cars. And stuck to it, staring intently at Blake, was a photograph of a face. It was the older kid, Michael. A six-by-four close-up, everything from forehead to chin, so that it was almost life-size. A band of clear tape had been wound around the top and the bottom to keep it in place.

  What the fuck?

  He walked to the other bed, throwing back the sheet and releasing a cloud of spores. There was no face here, just a pair of pyjamas laid out on the mattress as if whoever had been wearing them had evaporated. Blake turned to leave, then doubled back and gently replaced the two sheets, wary of disturbing whatever laid at rest here.

  He wondered if there were clothes in the girl’s room too, if little Alice had been recreated there. But the feeling of dread was like somebody had poured cement into his hollow limbs, setting fast. He turned the other way, lumbering like Frankenstein’s monster, the phone’s feeble light revealing a staircase.

  If the top floor of the house had been dark, the ground floor was worse. Blake stared into what might have been a puddle of pitch, a pool of liquid night. He imagined descending into that oil-black stillness and simply unravelling, being completely and utterly erased from existence. His foot hovered over the first step for what felt like forever, hanging there over that terrible absence. It was only when he heard something shifting from behind him, from the boys’ room, and imagined seeing that assemblage of old clothes shuffle from the door—that empty bag head seeking him, those photographed eyes blinking—that he pushed on.

  He descended slowly, gripping the bannister so hard he thought it might splinter. At one point his heel slipped on the wet track and he lunged down onto the next step, his spine jarring. He made his way to the bottom and hardly dared lift the phone for fear of what he might see. He was gulping air like a fish out of water, a man removed from his element and thrust into some alien, airless, impossible space.

  Just turn around and go, he told himself, but that would mean walking back up the stairs, back past the bedrooms. And he knew he’d hear whispers this time, somebody singing nursery rhymes from the wardrobe. Fuck, get a grip, Blake, get a grip.

  For a second he stood there, literally paralyzed. Movement was suddenly impossible. He wondered if he would remain here forever, if the moss and the damp and the mould would start to creep up his legs, if he’d just become part of this place until somebody brought in a demolition crew and tore it down.

  It was that thought—the thought of spending the rest of time here, of never seeing the sun again, never seeing Julia and Connor again—that drove him forward. It was like pulling his legs from mud but he did it, stumbling across a wide, oak-floored hallway and through an open, doorless arch.

  It was the living room, with a large corner sofa and an empty TV table in the opposite corner. There was a soft, miserable glow coming from the far wall and Blake saw that the board there was loose, letting in a minuscule fraction of the day. He swam through the darkness like a drowning man fighting towards a boat, cracking his shin on something and growling with the shock of it.


  He pushed at the loose board and it stretched into the clean, fresh air outside. Blake gulped at it, feeling like it was the first time he’d taken a breath since climbing in upstairs. He almost cried with the relief of it, letting loose a desperate sob. The board was hinged at the top and he stuck his head out to the side, letting the rain fall on him, beautifully cool.

  He was at the other side of the house, he saw, the double garage to his left and nothing but scrubland leading into Thetford Forest twenty feet away. Craning out further and looking the other way he could just about make out the driveway and the fallen sign. After the murk of the house the day looked blindingly bright and beautiful, searing his retinas.

  Taking another deep breath, he dived back inside, blinking the afterglow from his vision. It seemed even darker now, but with the open window beside him, the house had lost some of its power. He found the table he’d cracked his shin on, grabbing a lamp and wedging it between the board and the sill so that a little sickly light spilled inside. Between that and his phone, he could just about make out the entire room.

  Not that he wanted to.

  Two people sat on the sofa, leaning into each other like toppled tombstones. Like the boy upstairs, they weren’t actual bodies. They were both made from withered scraps of old clothes. The shape on the left was nothing more than a long, flowing skirt, a cream blouse that was decorated with blossoming flowers of dark mould. What looked like a piece of net curtain, maybe a tea towel, hung above it all like a veil. The figure next to it was wearing a black suit, a white shirt stuffed into the jacket and a plain black cap resting on the top of the cushion behind. Two pairs of shoes had been neatly arranged on the floor beneath them.

  Blake moved closer, rooting his fingers into the cold, damp fabric of the sofa. The clothes weren’t just resting there, they had been fixed to the sofa cushions. He could see the glint of the staples reflected in the light from his phone. There was nothing inside those clothes, but he still couldn’t stop himself from picturing them suddenly soaring up and dancing around the room. He wanted to rip them from their mounts and cast them into the day to exorcise whatever might possess them.

  He turned away, searching the rest of the room. On the floor between the two not-corpses—right at the point where the body bag had lain in the crime scene photo Blake had seen—was a crumpled mess of bedding. He walked to it, using the toe of his shoe to lift a filthy sheet, revealing an air mattress beneath which was half deflated. As soon as he moved the bedding an explosion of stench filled the room and he gagged, dribbling bile, his eyes watering.

  Jesus Christ.

  Only when he had wiped away the tears did he notice that there was something odd about the fireplace. He edged around the sofa, aiming his torch. There must have been twenty framed photographs arranged in a loose semicircle around the hearth, facing out. Littered between and over them were three times as many without frames. Something had congealed on them and it took Blake a moment to work out that it was white wax from a collection of candles arranged along the mantelpiece. There were dozens of them, melted into a layer that was an inch thick or more. Newer ones stood on the melted bodies of their predecessors. It looked like an altar.

  Above the photographs, mounted on the bulk of the chimney, were cuttings from newspapers. Some were yellowed with age, others much newer—very new, by the look of it. The headlines were all variations of the same thing: Family of Four Slaughtered; Unexplained Murders Still Haunt East Anglia; Mother and Child Missing. Some of the photos were of Elizabeth and her family, but there were other people there, staring out of the fading paper with haunted expressions. Blake studied the newer pieces, seeing a photograph of an old house—the place where the newspaper girls had been kept this summer, he remembered. Another showed a sketch of an obese man in a pig mask. It was a gallery of horrors and he had to turn away after a moment or two.

  There was a box inside the fireplace, sitting in the hearth. It was made of wood and studded with metal like a tiny treasure chest, the whole thing blackened as if somebody had tried to burn it. A padlock secured it.

  Blake walked closer, taking a deep, uncertain breath that was soaked in that same awful stench. He coughed it out, spotting a collection of cheap plastic lighters on the mantel. He sparked one up and lit a candle, then another for good measure. Pocketing the lighter and his phone he took a step back, feeling something shatter beneath his foot.

  A photo. He crouched, lifting it to the light and shaking the broken glass out of the frame. Elizabeth and her daughter. But if this was a treasured photo then there had been something wrong with the Nevills, because Alice—aged two or three—had her mouth twisted open in a scream that Blake could almost hear, her eyes pools of tears. Elizabeth was wearing a look of fury, aimed not at her daughter but at whoever was taking the photo. It was a low angle shot, maybe three foot. One of the boys, maybe, messing around with the camera while their mum was trying to fix a problem with Alice.

  He dropped it, picked up another one. This one showed Alice, older now but no less upset. It was taken straight down, by one of the parents, surely. They were in the garden, by a mound of dirt, two sticks fashioned into a crude cross. It looked like the grave of a pet. Why the hell would anybody frame this?

  They wouldn’t.

  Blake thought of the photos inside his office, the ones that had been smuggled into those frames, the ones he’d never wanted to see again. It had happened here, too, somebody toying with their lives, with their memories. But why? Why go to the trouble of persecuting somebody like this if all you wanted to do was kill them?

  He placed the photo face down and rummaged through the rest. The pictures that had been put inside frames were mostly unpleasant ones—mum and dad arguing, one of the boys after falling off his bike, howling through a bloodied nose. But the loose photographs were all normal, like they’d been lifted from a family album. He brushed through them, seeing Luis and Elizabeth and their kids, smiling, laughing, playing board games, out for walks, walking through Hyde Park…

  Only this last one wasn’t Luis and Elizabeth. It was Blake and Julia, tossing marshmallows into the air, Blake’s face distorted by the effort and yet still gurning a wide, goofy grin. He stared at it, turning it, trying to work out if it was real. But it was real, it was the very same photo that had been lifted from his office.

  It was unbearable, the thought of that photo being here in this awful place. The sensation of being violated made his stomach churn and he dove into the pile, scattering photos, searching for the others. There, Blake on his charity run, beaming at Julia though the camera lens. It had a blob of wax stuck to it and he peeled it away, desperately searching for the rest, grabbing the frames and casting them aside in a clatter of breaking glass and crashing metal—making so much noise that he almost didn’t hear the growl of an engine outside.

  Thirty-Seven

  Blake straightened so quickly that his back spasmed, cramping. He clutched a hand to it, trapping a cry behind his clenched teeth as he listened for the noise.

  Just your imagination, just your imagination.

  No, there was a car approaching the house, an old one by the sound of it. There was the soft detonation of a faulty muffler, the engine revving hard then falling quiet.

  Fuck.

  Blake got to his feet, a head rush almost bringing him down again. He grabbed the mantelpiece to hold himself up, blowing out the candles.

  Too dark. He pulled out his phone and switched on the torch again, the smooth metal slipping in his fingers and plummeting. He fished for it, found it, crossing the room to the window in a ducking run. He eased his head out to see an ancient Ford Mondeo at the end of the drive, headlights blazing towards the house. The windscreen was full of reflected cloud, revealing nothing.

  Who the hell was it?

  Swallowing hard, Blake eased the lamp from the window and let the board flap shut. He squatted there for a moment, wondering if he should just dive out of here and run into the forest, loop around in a circl
e back to his car. It had been off the road, so whoever was out there in the Mondeo might not have seen it. If he went now then he could get out unseen.

  He didn’t move, and a moment later he heard the pop of the Ford’s door being opened, then slammed shut. Footsteps crunched on wet dirt, splashing through puddles, heading this way.

  Fuck!

  The creak of the veranda deck, the hollow thump of somebody walking to this side of the house. Of course they would be, he realised. Nobody would be stupid enough to climb in through an upstairs window when there was an open one on the ground floor.

  He moved as quietly and as quickly as he could, cracking his shin on the coffee table again and knocking something to the floor. He threw himself back into the hall as the room behind him flooded with grey light. Somebody climbed into the living room, coughing through a phlegmy throat. A man, sniffing hard.

  Was it him? Blake stood there as quietly as he could, one hand clutched over his hummingbird heart. He heard a high-pitched whine and realised it was leaking from his own throat. He remembered his phone, clenched in the other sweaty fist, and jammed it into his pocket before the light gave him away.

  Silence. Whoever was in the room next door was standing perfectly still.

  They know you’re here.

  Or were they just moving quietly? Would a hand suddenly curl out from the door and lock itself over Blake’s mouth.

  He had to move. But where? He was as good as blind out here. If he went for the stairs then he’d trip, give himself away.

  What other option did he have? He squinted into the dark, seeing the phantom outline of a door further down. A kitchen, maybe? There might be a way out through there.

  The man sniffed again. Then there was a loud, abrasive bleep, so out of place here that Blake’s whole body gave an electric jolt. It was a phone, a text message arriving.