Six Days, Six Hours, Six Minutes

by Alex Smith

  “So,” she said. “What now?”

  Fifty-Six

  They explored the house together, cataloguing the rooms. There wasn’t much else downstairs apart from a dining room the same size as the playroom and a small toilet. The front door and the back door—which led out of the kitchen—were boarded up so tight it would take a chainsaw to cut through them. The only way in down here was through the living room window.

  Blake didn’t want to go back upstairs, but he led the way using the Maglite, showing Julia the master bedroom and the two children’s rooms. There was a spare room too, plus the family bathroom and an airing cupboard. There was also a hatch in the ceiling of the hallway that led to the attic. It was bolted shut from this side. They checked all of the windows, ending up in the spare room where the loose board looked down to the side of the house.

  “It’s tough to get up there,” Blake said. “You have to get right on the fence.”

  “Unless they have a ladder,” Julia replied, nodding to the big building on the other side of the path. Connor squirmed in her arms but the kid was exhausted, barely able to keep his eyes open. They’d left Doof in the playroom, much to his annoyance. “What’s in the barn?”

  “Just tools, a generator,” he said, looking sheepish. “And a ladder.”

  “Does the genny work?”

  “You’re asking the wrong guy.”

  They traipsed back downstairs, past Doof’s howls, clambering out into the garden. Daniel Keller’s body lay where it had fallen. The rain had washed away the blood, washed away every trace of colour, making his corpse glow like moonlight. His throat was a ragged mess, and his eyes were open. Blake wondered if he should close them, but he couldn’t bring himself to touch the boy just in case those eyes suddenly rolled in their sockets and looked up at him.

  Blake led the way to the barn, to the rotting wooden door he’d smashed through in search of rope. He shone the torch over the deserted workbenches, the ladder that led to the small hayloft, then onto the old, orange generator.

  “Give me that,” said Julia. She passed Connor to Blake and took the torch. Ducking down, she fiddled with the buttons then opened up the fuel cap.

  “Any juice in here?” she asked.

  “Not that I saw.”

  She beamed the torch past him, shining it on a couple of barrels in the corner of the barn.

  “Did you actually look?”

  Grumbling, he walked over and shook one. It was empty. The other one sloshed when he tilted it, and he prized off the cap with his free hand to smell petrol inside.

  “Bingo,” he said. Julia rolled it over to the generator and hefted it up, emptying half of it into the tank.

  “Hang on,” she said, clicking switches.

  “How do you even know what you’re doing?” he asked, struggling to hold his son.

  “Dad had one of these in his boathouse,” she said. “Well, not like this, but close enough. Let me switch it on when I was a kid.”

  “Your dad had a boat?”

  “No,” she smiled to herself. “Just the boathouse, in our old place. I used it as a den, which was crazy dangerous now that I think about it. There.”

  She pulled the starter cord and the generator coughed. She tried again and it wheezed to life like a bear, vibrating so hard the barn might have collapsed. A bulb overhead powered on, then immediately exploded. More followed, glowing with pale light.

  “Did I ever tell you how much I love you?” Blake said, grinning at her.

  “Not enough,” she replied. She scanned the barn, Blake watching her, seeing the cogs of her brain turn. “You think we can rig up a trap in here, like we did with the house?”

  “There’s some petrol left,” Blake said, nodding at the can. “We could probably fix something up.”

  “Get on it, I’ll go check the dog.”

  She took Connor and kissed Blake on the cheek, walking swiftly out of the barn. Blake touched his face, the heat of her lips still there. Then he turned to the gasoline can. It was light enough now to lift, and he upended it into a plastic bucket he found beneath one of the workbenches. He couldn’t think of anything to do with it so he carried it through the door and out into the rain.

  Inside the house, the bulbs in the living room and hallway were glowing weakly. Julia sat in the playroom going through the duffel bag. Connor was rolling around on the floor, Doof pouncing on him, the dog’s tongue leaving big wet trails on the kid’s face. He was laughing, though. The sound seemed to bring a little life back to the house, made it bearable.

  “Take a couple of these,” Julia said, handing him the hypodermics. He put down the bucket and took them carefully, looking at the piss-coloured liquid inside.

  “Bleach,” she said. “Toilet bleach. I filled them when you were asleep.”

  “Jesus,” he muttered. “You are one nasty bitch.”

  “It doesn’t matter where you stick them, just make sure it all goes in.”

  “Will it kill them?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so, not straight away, not unless it hits a vein. It will hurt like a motherfucker, though.”

  Blake nodded, checking the syringe caps. He walked to the B&Q bag and took out the box with the Paslode nail gun. It took him a few minutes to extract everything and work out where to put the gas cylinder and the battery and the rack of three-inch framing nails—longer than it would have because Doof was trying his best to help. By the time he was finished, Julia had slid down next to him, her head on his shoulder.

  “Does it work?” she asked.

  Blake aimed it across the room, but she put a hand on his arm.

  “Not in here, you dick. What if it bounces off the wall and goes in Connor’s head?”

  Blake muttered an apology and got to his feet, walking back into the living room. He aimed the gun at the far end of the room and pulled the big trigger. Nothing happened. He tried again, but the gun had some kind of safety lock. Pushing it to the floor, he tried again, this time hearing a crack that sounded like a breaking bone. Lifting it, he felt around the nozzle, finding a piece of the mechanism that slid back and forth. He pulled it back with one hand, then fired with the other. It popped in his hand, the recoil surprisingly strong. For a moment he wasn’t sure anything had happened, then he noticed the mark in the wall above the fireplace. He fired again, but the nail just ricocheted across the room, landing in the hearth next to the little wooden box.

  “Fuck,” he muttered, disappointed. As far as weapons went, he’d chosen a pretty poor one.

  He walked to the box and lifted it out of the fireplace with his free hand. Ash poured off it, as thick as sand. The box was light, and when he shook it he couldn’t feel anything inside, just that huge padlock rattling. Its wooden surface was charred, like it had burned for a while and then been taken out—saved, maybe. Blake glanced at the photos by his feet, at the candles, at the clothes arranged on the sofa. Everything here had meaning, so what the hell was this?

  He carried it to the playroom and threw it down by Julia’s feet.

  “See if you can get it open,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  “You know that’s the worst thing you can say in a situation like this, right?” she said. “Have you never watched a horror film?”

  He smiled as he left the room, making his way through the living room and out into the rain. Bracing the board against the window with his knee, he fired a nail through it. He worked up and around, blasting nails into the board until it was fixed tight against the frame. It wasn’t as secure as the other windows, but it would do.

  He wiped the rain from his face and made his way around the front of the house to the other side, staring up at the window of the spare room. He didn’t fancy trying to climb the fence with a nail gun in his hand, so he ducked back inside the barn and got the ladder from the hayloft. Manoeuvring it back outside in bouts of awful, feverish pain, he leaned it against the wall and climbed gingerly up it, the whole frame rocking. Once he was inside, he
grabbed the ladder and pulled it up, gritting his teeth against the sensation of his stitches straining. It seemed to take forever, but eventually it lay diagonally across the spare room and out onto the landing.

  He walked to the master bedroom and almost fell over, the world tilting like a roller coaster. He sat on the bed for a moment, eyes screwed shut as he waited for the vertigo to pass. Then he got up again, making his way to the window and firing a nail into the board. It took a while to pick it loose, but when he did he found he could look through the hole and see most of the garden below, Julia’s car and Daniel Keller’s Ford side by side, as well as the track leading into the woods and back to the road.

  “Jesus, Blake,” Julia said when he made his way downstairs. She had fashioned a baby sling from a piece of curtain and Connor lay in it, his head squished against her chest. “You look like shit. Come on, sit down.”

  Blake didn’t argue, sliding down the wall. Doof jumped onto his knee, licking his face, and he pushed him away. Julia pulled back his shirt and studied his wounds, tutting.

  “My beautiful stitches,” she said. “You’ve pulled three, but it will hold.”

  He smiled at her, but he could only hold it for a second before it became too heavy. He looked down and saw the open box, the entire padlocked latch prised from the wood. He picked it up, seeing something on the inside of the lid. Four words.

  HE IS ONLY ASH.

  It had been etched into the wood with a blade of some kind, the letters so rough Blake could barely make them out. Carved over the top, as if to obliterate them, was the same symbol he had found on his door, those three sixes.

  “He is only ash?” he said. “Weird.”

  “Maybe because somebody has tried to burn it,” Julia said, touching the charred outside of the box.

  “You find anything inside?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “Almost lost a toe, though, trying to open it with the machete.”

  “There was nothing in there?” he said, frowning.

  “No, well yeah, just this. I thought it was lining.”

  She leant over and scooped a piece of yellow paper from the floor, handing it over. It was so old that it flaked in Blake’s fingers, barely holding itself together. It was a newspaper article, immaculately trimmed and folded.

  “Staff and patients at Hellesdon Hospital throw fundraiser in support of local homeless,” he read aloud. There was a black and white photo, almost faded beyond recognition. He squinted at it, holding it up to the light. A group of people, six of them, stood and smiled at the camera. The four at the front were holding up a banner of some kind but he couldn’t read what it said. A stain masked the two people to the far right and Blake studied the other faces, recognising one.

  “It’s him,” he said. “Daniel.”

  He pointed to the guy second from left. A younger Daniel Keller was beaming at the camera like it was his birthday.

  “The dead guy?” Julia said, leaning in and adjusting the sling. Connor grumbled, his chubby fingers playing with a button on her shirt. “Why did he have this locked up in a box?”

  Blake shrugged, painfully. He scanned through the short article.

  “He must have been a patient there, at Hellesdon,” Blake said.

  “Makes sense, as it’s a psychiatric facility,” Julia replied.

  “It’s just a fundraiser,” Blake said. “Bake sale, patients making cushions and shit like that. It doesn’t make any—”

  He felt as if his heart had suddenly stopped, he had to literally will it to start again. It did so with a lurching, awful beat as if every ounce of blood had been compressed into a single artery.

  There, in the top left of the photo…

  He pulled it close. It was almost gone, almost erased by time and by smoke and by damp. But there was no denying it.

  “Holy shit,” Blake said. “No fucking way.”

  “What?” Julia asked.

  A man was standing at the back of the group. He was taller than the others by some way, towering over the woman next to him. He was wearing the white suit of an orderly or a nurse, his big hands folded over his chest. He was clean-shaven and his hair was much shorter, greased back over his head. He was younger, too. But there was no doubt about it, it was the man who called himself the devil. Blake could tell that just by looking at those eyes. They were grey and lifeless, sunken in their bruised sockets and staring at the camera. The eyes and that cold, emotionless, psychopathic smile.

  “It’s him,” he said.

  “You sure?” she asked. “I can’t tell.”

  “I’m sure,” he said, looking for a name and not finding one. “He must have worked there, in the hospital. Look at the caption: staff and patients raised over £2,500. That’s him, it’s fucking him.”

  And he couldn’t work out why he was grinning, why the room suddenly seemed bigger and brighter.

  “What?” Julia said.

  “I know why Daniel kept this,” Blake said, shaking the clipping. “I know why he locked it away, why he tried to burn it.”

  He was laughing now, it just spilled out of him.

  “Because it was proof that everything the man told him was a lie. He didn’t want to believe it, not at first. He wanted to think that the man was something more, something demonic. It’s what he does, isn’t it, he recruits gullible young men, kids. He tells them he’s a devil. Where better to do that than a psychiatric hospital? He must have convinced Daniel, and Daniel was willing to believe it.”

  “But not a hundred percent,” Julia said, looking at the photo. “He kept this to remind himself.”

  “Yeah,” said Blake, feeling a sudden, almost overpowering wash of pity for the young man. “He kept it so he would always know—so part of him would always know—that the man was full of shit, that he was lying.”

  “That he’s just a man,” said Julia, and her face opened up like a flower.

  Blake nodded. He wondered how he ever could have thought otherwise, how he ever could have believed the man was actually what he claimed to be. Fear, that’s all it was, all it had ever been. He folded the paper carefully and slid it into his pocket.

  “That he’s just a fucking man.”

  Fifty-Seven

  They made one more circuit of the house, testing every window and every door. Doof followed them everywhere, barking at shadows and scratching at the walls.

  “He’s going to give us away,” said Julia when the dog ran into the living room. He grabbed an old sandwich packet in his teeth, growling as he tried to shake it to death. “We can’t let him run around.”

  She was right, the dog might give them away, or—worse—might be used as collateral. They might just kill him for fun.

  “Lock him up?” Blake said.

  “What if they get to him?” she replied. “Can we take him outside, into the forest?”

  Blake nodded, picking up the dog. He was halfway across the living room before he remembered he’d secured the window.

  “Bollocks.”

  He grumbled to himself as he carried Doof upstairs and struggled with the ladder. The dog almost clawed his wounds open as they climbed down, snapping at Blake in panic. They stopped by Julia’s car to get his harness and lead, then headed into the woods. It was dark out here, really dark, the trees feeling for him with pine-fingered branches. He wondered if they should all move out here, if they would stand a better chance of surviving inside the forest.

  Then he tripped on a root, sprawling in a blitz of pain. Doof landed on his back and barked wildly as he flipped himself over. They’d be blind out here. Anything might happen.

  “Don’t worry, mate,” he told the dog as he tied him to a tree, knotting it twice and testing the harness to make sure it was secure. Doof whined in the dark, his big, smooth tongue lapping at Blake’s hand. “I’ll be back for you, okay?”

  He patted the dog’s head then turned and walked back the way he’d come. His heart was too heavy in his chest, like somebody had a hand in there h
olding him back. He realised that if he died tonight, if Julia and Connor went with him, then the dog would die a protracted and painful death. But what other choice was there?

  “I promise,” he called out, the dog’s whines chasing the lie. “I’ll be back.”

  He climbed the ladder and pulled it back through, making his way downstairs into the playroom. Only then did he slide his old phone from his pocket, staring at it.

  “You sure?” asked Julia, pacing back and forth as she tried to jiggle Connor to sleep. “There’s no going back, Blake. Not once he knows where we are.”

  He didn’t answer. He just turned the phone on and watched it boot up.

  Come on.

  He wondered if he should message the man, but then he would know that Blake was expecting him. Instead, he loaded up Google Maps and asked it to pinpoint his location. If his phone was cloned then the man would know instantly where he had gone.

  He paused. Julia was right, after this there would be no going back, no retreat and no surrender. The devil and his disciples would be on their way. He wiped his face and put the phone down. It bleeped almost immediately and Blake flinched, but the text wasn’t from the man, it was from Hermione.

  Oh goodness, Blake, turn your phone on! I have left a dozen messages! Where are you both?

  “Your mum,” he said, passing Julia the phone. She dialled his voicemail and listened, her mouth falling open.

  “What?”

  “Hush,” she said. Then, after a minute or so. “Oh my god, the house is gone. They… Hang on. Jesus, Blake, they found a couple of bodies inside. Mum thought it was us.”

  “Even though we told her we were okay?” Blake said.

  “The police are looking for us. They want to know why there were people in the house. They want to know who they were.”

  Blake popped his lips, trying to push away the thought that was battering against the edge of his mind. But it couldn’t be stopped. Those two men had died inside his house. They had died because he’d turned on the gas and rigged an explosion.