a collection of horror short stories

by Paul Finch

  Skelton felt under his jacket and drew out the one remaining photo of the three he’d stolen. He tossed it onto the desk. Hoggins glanced down at it with fascination. It portrayed a gruesome scene from the most recent Balkan war; a mutilated man hung in tatters above the heads of sobbing children.

  “While I was working here, I found this,” Skelton said.

  “I remember it. So? Look … a freelance tried to sell it to us. It should’ve been returned to him.”

  Skelton couldn’t resist smiling. “I just knew you didn’t use it in the paper.”

  “Course we didn’t! We’d have been hauled over the coals for publishing a picture like that.”

  “And of course it would’ve increased public sympathy with the bombing campaign.”

  Hoggins shook his head. “What?”

  “Len … I don’t recall exactly, but I have no doubt at all that you and your newspaper took an anti-war stance during that crisis.”

  “You’re not making sense,” Hoggins blathered, “… we’re a religious newspaper. We’re not likely to promote war, are we!”

  “Do you promote torture and mass murder?”

  “Of course not.”

  Skelton jabbed a finger down at the photograph. “Then why withhold this? Why … when it made it crystal clear what those Serb police units were up to and why military force was needed to stop them! Why bombs had to be dropped! Why, for once, ‘making love not war’ was a load of irrelevant bollocks!”

  “You’re going to kill me for this?” Hoggins stammered. “Politics?”

  “No, Len … I’m going to kill you for the same reason I killed John Pizer and Phil Barton.”

  Hoggins tried to reply but couldn’t; even in this dire peril those two names sank slowly in.

  “I’m going to kill you for the same reason Miss Burns had me caned that day when I was twelve … to make a good and lasting example.”

  “You killed Councillor Barton?” Hoggins whispered, his face twisted with revulsion.

  “Interesting,” Skelton said. “When it really comes to the crunch, you’re less concerned about the criminal.”

  “You … you necklaced a man?”

  “Doesn’t seem so righteous when it’s one of your own, does it?”

  “One … of my own?” Hoggins stuttered. “He was … never one of my own.”

  Skelton considered that, then shrugged. “Possibly true. He was just a poser. You’re an actual doer … which makes it even more appropriate in your case.”

  “You’ve really lost it, pal. You’ve really …”

  “Enough talking! Get over here!”

  Hoggins remained in his seat. “Why?”

  “We’re going into the newsroom.”

  “Why?” Hoggins asked again, but now Skelton crossed the office and dragged him roughly to his feet, jamming the gun into his ribs.

  “Like I say, to set an example.”

  “Look,” Hoggins jabbered, as he was propelled out through the door and into the main office, “this is all wrong … who the hell made you judge, jury and executioner?”

  As the two figures appeared, a stunned silence spread through the ranks of reporters, subs and telesales girls. People rose unsteadily to their feet, phones were dropped, fingers tapping out tattoos on keyboards continued to tap but lost all rhythm and pattern. From the nearest desk, where the secretaries worked, there was a stifled scream.

  Skelton held his ground until sure he had the full attention of the office, all the while holding Hoggins in front of him like a shield. With careful accuracy, he fitted the muzzle of the pistol into the nape of his prisoner’s neck. Hoggins tried to flinch away, but his captor held him in a firm grip.

  “This is one way the Serbs liked to do it, I understand,” Skelton whispered. “It’s an old KGB method.”

  “You fucking madman!” Hoggins replied.

  “Just concentrate on saying your prayers, Len, ’cause you need to!”

  And at that precise moment Len Hoggins found his courage. The desperation of fight or flight finally took him over, and with as much force as he could muster, he lunged his elbow back, catching Skelton hard in the midriff. The ex-cop’s flat, firm belly didn’t yield, but air hissed through his clenched teeth, and for a second he was off balance – and then all hell let loose.

  People ran and shouted; a sturdy young man standing close by ventured bravely forward; a secretary grabbed up a phone and began to shriek into it – and Skelton pumped the trigger as hard as he could, two or three times.

  But it made no difference.

  The gun didn’t fire.

  Skelton had handled firearms many times during his police service, but he had never been permitted to carry one on duty, and had never really been trained to use one. He’d thought the safety was off, but the truth was that he hadn’t known for certain. As panic erupted around him, the deadly weapon was suddenly little more than a lump of steel in his hand. Though even lumps of steel had their uses.

  “The Devil protects his own, eh!” Skelton snarled, yanking Hoggins back by the collar. “Not on my shift!”

  With savage over-arm swipes, he clubbed the newspaper editor’s cranium, each blow ripping flesh and hair asunder, showing bloodied yellow bone beneath.

  Something then hit Skelton in the face – a thrown diary – and though he barely felt it, it woke him up to the growing danger of his predicament. Office staff were bustling on all sides, some dashing for the doors, others yammering into phones. With a deafening electronic ‘whoop whoop whoop’, a stray hand had activated the fire alarm. And then the sturdy young man lurched forward. Skelton turned to face him, stopping only to shove away the sagging form of Len Hoggins. The young man was an editorial assistant of some sort, as his shirt and tie attested – he was burly, perhaps he played rugby or went climbing at the weekends, but he was fresh-faced and young, only twenty at the most, and he’d never encountered anyone whose sole profession was, or at least had become, total violence.

  Skelton pounded the youngster, body and head, first with the Browning, then with his free fist. It was a toss-up which of these wrought the most damage, but the final punch, delivered with neck-breaking force into the underside of the young guy’s jaw, lifted him bodily from his feet and launched him over a row of computer terminals like a thing made of rags and cloth. There were more screams and shouts. VDUs hit the carpet in explosions of glass and sparks, a desk fell – and now, from some distant part of the city, even over the repeating screech of the fire alarm, Skelton could hear the approaching wail of police sirens.

  Knowing the game was up, at least for the time being, he turned and fled, barging out through a fire exit and descending a spiralling flight of concrete steps. Sweat broke on his brow as he ran, and it was chaotic seconds before he even thought to thrust the pistol out of sight beneath his jacket. He landed breathless on the ground floor and pushed his way through the facing door, only to find himself in the gigantic building’s ornate lobby, which was thronging with confused people who had spilled out from the various offices and lifts. Among them, Skelton spotted several breathless members of staff from the Echo, all talking animatedly with a clutch of receptionists and security guards, gesticulating at the grand staircase. Even as Skelton watched, a police constable hurried in via the entrance doors, threading through the frightened crowd. The Echo staff fought their way towards him. Skelton still considered sidling past, hoping to lose himself in the pandemonium, but spinning blue lights were visible in the street outside. More police officers could be seen leaping from cars and vans.

  Skelton turned and scrambled back up the fire escape stairs. The building was likely to be a rabbit warren – there should be any number of exits. A moment later, he found himself in a first-floor corridor with dozens of office doors leading off it, but all were now open and silent. The alarm had driven everybody out, which Skelton realised was a fortunate accident. Trying not to run, to avoid attracting the attention of anyone left, he hastened along the passage, round
ed a corner and set off up another flight of stairs. He was travelling in a vaguely eastern direction, he reasoned – this should take him to the rear of the building, where there ought to be additional fire escapes. As he made his way, he passed various video cameras. His image would be printed on the celluloid innards of each and every one, though detection had been inevitable from the outset. He only sought to escape now in order to re-plan and execute the final phase of his scheme. Hoggins wasn’t yet dead; of that Skelton was certain – and that had to be put right before he did anything else. He couldn’t, in fact he wouldn’t, leave that sole remaining photograph undealt with. He couldn’t bear to keep thinking about it: the hacked, shredded face, the hanging entrails, the splintered lengths of bone.

  “Excuse me, sir … can I have a word?”

  Skelton stopped and turned. A security guard had stepped from an office behind him, and, though having gone pale because he’d unexpectedly found the man he was looking for, he was now warily approaching. Skelton appraised the guard quickly: he was broad of chest and shoulder, but heavily overweight and with a full head of snow-white hair. The bar of coloured braids on the chest pocket of his smart blue tunic indicated that he was ex-military, possibly a war veteran. That was a shame.

  Skelton wiped the sweat from his flustered brow. “What can I do for you?”

  “I … er, I …”

  The security guard came as close as he could, and made a frenzied grab. But Skelton was ready, slamming two massive punches into his guts, then locking an arm around his head and throwing him across the passage – or at least trying to. The ex-soldier clung to Skelton as hard as he could, wrapping both arms around his waist.

  “Stupid old bastard!” Skelton spat. “Don’t make me hurt you!” The guard grunted something under his breath, his fat old face already blotched purple with burst blood vessels. They wrestled back and forth, Skelton feeling an overwhelming rage. “Stupid motherfuck­­—” He barrelled across the passage, ramming the guy’s head into the wall – once, twice, three times. Plaster cracked with the force, blood smeared it. “YOU WEREN’T ON THE FUCKING LIST, IDIOT!” he screamed. “NOW LOOK AT YOU!”

  It was several impacts more before Skelton calmed down sufficiently to drop the broken body and continue running. Now it was panic-stricken flight, passage after passage, stairway after stairway. He fancied he could hear shouts inside the building – was that a chopper whirring somewhere above? Skelton knew from his own experience that these days too many unarmed police officers got gunned down in UK cities; armed units were now always ready and available to be scrambled. Let a single firearm appear, and the heavy mob was there in next to no time.

  Even as he considered this, he blundered out onto a metal fire escape that dropped thirty feet into the building’s main loading bay; already, two police cars were visible there, a bunch of uniformed officers hovering uncertainly around them. At the far end of the bay, the security barrier had lifted and a large white van was swinging underneath it, almost certainly an ARV. The cops below now spotted him and immediately started to advance up the steps. He drew the revolver and pointed it at them – it halted them in their tracks.

  “Back off! Back off … I’ll blow your fucking brains out.”

  They watched him until he retreated from sight, then a burst of shouting filled the loading bay. Boots hammered the steel treads. “It’s that nutcase Skelly,” Skelton thought he heard someone say. “Used to be job. Bladdered every fucker he got his hands on!”

  This time the shit had really hit the fan. As Skelton hared back through the building, a sense of defeat was growing on him. Not only had they trapped him, but they’d identified him as well. There’d be nowhere to run after this, or hide – even if he somehow broke out of the cordon they’d no doubt thrown around the entire building. He’d be pictured on TV, in newspapers. He’d be hunted down. Only one option remained, it seemed – one!

  He halted at an intersection of corridors. Sweat drenched the inside of his leathers; the breath rasped in his chest. Fit as he was, Skelton wasn’t used to this type of dashing back and forth, this relentless charging up and down flights of stairs. But if he could somehow find his way back to the Echo’s offices, he might be able to finish off what he’d come here to do. He knew that he hadn’t killed Hoggins, but he’d certainly knocked him cold – which meant the bastard might still be lying there. It was highly unlikely that any of the dweebs on his staff would have risked their skins trying to save him.

  Skelton took the first flight of stairs down to the fourth floor. As with the others, it was deserted: coats, bits of paper, the odd pen littered the corridors, indicating the company personnel’s indecent speed of departure. He made his way through the reception area and into the newsroom. The wreckage of his previous visit was everywhere: strewn documents, overturned desks, shattered VDUs – and Len Hoggins, still at the far end of the office where Skelton had left him.

  Hoggins was no longer prone on the floor, but had somehow managed to drag himself up into a chair, where he slumped helplessly, a beaten king in the ruins of his realm. His normally pristine attire was crumpled and torn and stained with blood, his face ash-grey, the hair above it an unkempt mass of gory locks. His expression spoke agonised incomprehension; he didn’t seem even vaguely aware what had happened to him. As Skelton approached, he noticed that Hoggins’s shoulders had locked in a see-saw posture and that his right arm hung at a crazy angle, twisted with paralysis.

  Finishing the hypocrite off now might actually be doing him a favour, which wasn’t part of the plan at all. Still …

  Skelton turned the gun over in his hands, puzzling at its refusal to function. As he’d originally surmised, it was a Browning, a modern and sophisticated model, but infamously simple to use. He examined it more closely. This time the safety was clearly off, yet, despite all the pressure he exerted, the trigger refused to give. It was either jammed or broken, he decided. He turned the gun again, pressed the trigger harder, tried to release the magazine to unload and re-load …

  And was totally unprepared for the thunderous detonation that shattered one of the windows directly behind him.

  Skelton hurled himself to the floor and rolled behind a toppled desk. Several seconds passed before he dared glance up again. The first thing he saw was the Browning – he’d dropped it in his fright, but it only lay five or six feet away. The second thing was Hoggins, still slouched in the chair – a messed-up, lifeless mannequin, a mockery of the slick young hotshot he’d once been. If all else failed, that alone was a result. But all else hadn’t failed. Not yet. Skelton glanced at the window; only a few shards of glass remained in its frame, but beyond it, on the far side of the street, other buildings loomed, many of their windows wide open.

  Ideal sniper positions, he realised.

  That had been close.

  The time for carelessness was over.

  He proceeded on his elbows and knees, snaking towards the gun. It was hardly dignified – but then neither was it easy; he’d only gone two or three feet before exhaustion overcame him. Skelton halted, hanging his head – and watched in wonderment as a strand of bloody saliva spooled from his mouth.

  Slowly, he sensed a chill spreading through his insides. He responded quickly, trying to leap up, trying to pat himself down for damage – but blinding agony lanced clean through him, curling him into a knot, throwing him down on the carpet again, the force of which blow only added to his torture. Skelton cringed at a flaring pain the like of which he’d never imagined. It was right in the centre of him, and it seemed to grow and grow; it was white, searing through his chest like corrosive acid. He attempted to suck new air into his lungs, but glutinous gore was gurgling in his throat. If he could only suppress his increasing panic. There was still time to finish his mission, to defy those bastards out there, who admittedly were better shots than he’d ever considered possible, but who as always were too late and too half-assed in their efforts to enforce the law.

  With a blood-thick s
nigger, he dragged himself out to full-length and extended his right arm towards the gun. “Jush one,” he blathered, “one …”

  It would take a single shot. Skelton was no expert, but he was only ten yards from his target, and if he could just squeeze off one round. He coughed crimson mucus as his fingers alighted on the Browning … which was still warm, which still trickled smoke from its muzzle.

  It took several seconds for the meaning of that to impress on Skelton.

  When it finally did, he might have laughed out loud, had the shock not added insult to unbearable injury, had it not sent a convulsion through his already shattered form that bunched him up and ground him down. The force of the floor against his nose went unnoticed, for Skelton knew that death was upon him – he was strangling on his own vomit, drowning in his own gore. Things twisted inside as he writhed; ragged things, torn and flopping things.

  And all the while Hoggins sat there in the chair, nodding and drooling, and staring sightless from under his crown of spiky, blood-clotted hair.

  Skelton no longer saw him. His sight had given out. Like his vascular system. He couldn’t even whimper. The crushing pain had finally become unbearable. But even then it grew worse, worse, steadily worse – like the inexorable pressure of a clenching fist.

  A gigantic, clenching fist.

  What’s Behind You

  Paul Finch

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  What’s Behind You

  “I’ve never really experienced anything genuinely spooky or supernatural,” Pendleton said. “With one exception.”

  The rest of us were all ears.

  Pendleton was a dominant figure at the far end of the dining table. He was a tall, lean man with longish white hair, bright eyes, a sharp patrician nose and a square jaw. His blue velvet smoking jacket, frilled shirt and ruffled neck-cloth, far from making him look a dandy or eccentric, gave him an almost regal bearing. His clipped, resonant voice – despite his North Country background, he spoke perfect ‘BBC English’ – was entirely in keeping with his current role as Slade Professor of Fine Art at University College.