Angelika nodded. “It’s always easier driving at night. There’s no traffic on the autobahn and the Merc does a cool 220 k.p.h., no bother. You cover the distances in no time at all.”
“That’s quite a lifestyle.”
“Yup, always fast and dangerous.”
“Dangerous?” Asa asked with a grin. “Why?”
“Well, a tire blow-out at 220 and you’ve had it.” Angelika gave her a sidelong glance. “Doesn’t the thought scare you?”
“No—it’s exciting. How about going a bit faster?” She grinned.
Asa had never been afraid of taking lifts with strangers. So far there had been only two disconcerting situations. Once there’d been a young student who was high as a kite and really not fit to drive at all, and then another time the guy had insisted on sex as payment for the ride. But Asa knew how to look after herself—the many and varied jobs she’d done had given her quick reactions, and in spite of her slim build she was strong and used to defending herself. The guy who tried to get it on with her got his comeuppance with a few sharp jabs high and a well-aimed blow lower down. He’d even ended up giving her 500 euros not to go to the police about him.
Angelika laughed. “I don’t get passengers saying that very often.”
“Do you give rides to hitchhikers a lot?” Asa was loving watching the landscape fly past. The speedometer showed 181 k.p.h.
“From time to time.” The woman nodded to the sign for the motorway junction. “Nearly there. Do you need a hotel?”
Asa hesitated. “I …” Her finances weren’t looking great.
Angelika must have been reading her thoughts. “If you like, you can stay with me,” came the surprise offer. “I’ve got a spare room. Then tomorrow, shower, breakfast and on your way to Hamburg.”
“Oh, that’s really nice of you!” Asa jumped at the opportunity. “Tell me, what’s your most recent film?”
“Night of the Corpses, Part 11,” Angelika replied proudly. “DVD production, a classic splatter-horror. We sold 150,000 copies and it’s in all the video shops.” She took the exit to Hannover into an obviously well-to-do suburb. “A lot of it was filmed at my house, in the cellar.”
“Really? What fun!”
“That’s what I thought. There are still a few extras hanging around. They sort of suit the place. You never know when you might need them again.” Angelika pulled up in front of an impressive-looking mansion and got out of the car.
She led the way into the building, where it was as silent as the sandstone caves had always been after the last visitor had left. Asa was still upset about the way Martin and Bernard had died, but it hadn’t been her fault. Unsurprisingly, her boss had not responded to her text.
Angelika switched on the light. “Welcome!”
The spotlights in the hallway picked out gruesome specimens displayed in niches or on pedestals; there were glass jars containing human and animal remains: malformed fetuses, hydrocephalic brains, the embryo stages of Siamese twins, misshapen body parts. And no fewer than four skeletons—one of them giant-size, one of them tiny, one twisted and another one bent nearly double—stood in huge display cabinets. It looked as if the doors would open any second for the bones of the dead to hurl themselves out onto the living.
Asa put down her duffel bag and clapped her hands with glee. “Wow! What a collection. Where did you get it all?”
Angelika blinked in astonishment. “Aren’t you even a little bit … well, taken aback?”
“No. Should I be?”
The horror film director gave a loud laugh. It sounded cruel, like an archetypal film villain. “Well, in that case, I’ve got an idea. What would you think of spending the night in the room we made the films in?”
“Why not?” Asa took a look around, drinking in her impressions. This would all have been great for a new level at the Ghost Ride, but of course, unfortunately … It occurred to her that one day, maybe, she might open her own Horror Park—one with a built-in heart attack warning.
“It might be horrible.”
“Doesn’t bother me.”
Angelika folded her arms and all of a sudden her eyes grew ice-cold and murderous. “Let’s say, if you stick it out till morning, I’ll give you 1,000 euros.”
Asa regarded her hostess with surprise. “I’ll win that bet at all events—unless there’s something down there that’s going to kill me.”
Angelika shook her head and led her through the lobby, going past the glass displays to the back of the hall where there was a heavy metal door secured with an electronic lock. She tapped in the code and the door swung open. Neon lighting clicked on automatically and the stairs became visible. There were splashes of blood on the steps, and a sickly-sweet smell—like the smell of decay. Warm air streamed up, and there was a distant roar, as if from a huge fire.
Asa was reminded of the gas burners in the workshop. “It looks as if your cleaners haven’t been very thorough,” she murmured, and she went down the steps, her duffel bag over her shoulder. “See you in the morning. Bacon and eggs.”
“What?”
“For my breakfast.” Asa turned round, grinning. “I’ll be hungry.”
Angelika looked at her in surprise, one hand playing with the pendant that hung around her neck. The metal door clanged shut and the locking mechanism clicked into place.
The brown-haired girl went down slowly, noting how the smell of decay increased with each step she took. There were even more bloodstains down here. It looked as if someone had chucked a load of intestines down the stairs—or people, perhaps, with open wounds. Otherwise Asa couldn’t explain the mess. The smell was appalling.
When she reached the tiled area at the bottom of the stairs the sight took her breath away: in the cold neon light she saw eleven naked corpses in various stages of decay hanging from the ceiling. Some were strung up, as if on a gallows, and some had been suspended, skewered on sharp meat-hooks.
The dead bodies twisted slowly as they hung there, blind eyes fixed on the young woman below. Their gray flesh showed deep cuts and ax wounds and was covered in mold. Coagulated blood that had dripped down was black and sticky, like jam; bellies were bloated with the expanding internal gases and some had even burst open. Evil-smelling fluids seeped down the legs, forming stinking puddles on the floor.
Asa sighed. That made clear where the awful smell was coming from. She’d never be able to sleep with that stink.
But between the hanging cadavers she could see a bed, made up with clean fresh linen. It was worth a try.
The girl put her duffel bag down on the duvet cover and investigated her surroundings.
She soon found where the roaring sound was coming from: there was a central-heating furnace in the next room. It was computer-operated, but there was a large drop-door that could be opened to shovel in coal.
In the tiled room Asa found a tap, a wide roll of heavy-duty cling-film, a hosepipe and some cleaning fluid. The detergent didn’t smell bad at all.
She soon had a plan. She estimated the time at her disposal. It was shortly before midnight now; if she put her back into it, she’d be finished in an hour and could get a good night’s sleep. She hadn’t made any promises to the film producer about not altering the state of the room. The deal was whether she could stick it out down there all night. She wouldn’t be losing that bet.
Asa took the cling-film and wrapped herself up in it, clothes and all, as protection against the noxious fluids from the corpses. One-by-one she lifted the dead bodies down from the ceiling. She assumed Angelika must have stolen them from a cemetery. Weirdo horror-film-woman freak.
She didn’t find it hard to drag the bodies, male and female, over to the furnace. One cadaver at a time was pushed into the roaring fire to roast in the flames. The ghastly smell in the cellar lessened.
As she was heaving the last of the corpses in through the furnace door, the young man turned his head. His blinded eyes were fixed on Asa.
“Thank you for letting us all fi
nd rest,” he said, speaking through cracked and blackened lips oozing dark blood like thick oil. “Avenge us, and you will receive a greater reward still.”
The man’s legs were already alight and flames were licking up at the rest of the body that Asa was still carrying. She was holding a ghost in her arms: a real live dead ghost—no imitation this time. Fantastic! It was so exciting, such a turn-on. “What do you mean?”
“Angelika murdered us—we were all hitchhikers, like you. She took us home and made films with us, horrible films. We were tortured to death. Then she used what was left of us as props for her next films,” the dead man said. “Kill her—or you’ll suffer the same fate!”
Fire spread, crackling, over the rotten flesh, consuming it. The corpse uttered one long last cry before Asa dropped him into the inferno. She clanged the furnace door shut.
She didn’t succumb to panic, or rush around like a headless chicken. The important thing was to get some sleep now so that she’d be strong enough to stand up to the film director in the morning.
She quickly set about hosing the juices from the rotten cadavers down the drain, then she took off her cling-film protection and hurled it into the furnace. After that she dispensed cleaning fluid liberally into every corner of the room, filling the whole place with the fragrance of oranges.
For her own security she took a length of nylon thread out of her kit and used the meat-hooks to fasten it like a tripwire across the stairs. She hung the rest of the sharpened Sshaped hooks off the bed-rail.
Satisfied, Asa lay down, in a clean, warm environment that smelled of citrus.
A loud crash woke her.
She sat bolt upright, and saw Angelika getting up from where she’d tripped over the nylon thread. There was a shattered video camera on the tiles, and a case containing knives and surgical instruments had burst open, shedding its wickedly-sharp contents all over the floor.
The film director was wearing a long butcher’s apron and metal-ringed gloves, the sort used to protect against slipping knives when working with carcasses.
Angelika pushed herself to her feet with a curse and grabbed a meat cleaver and a scalpel. When she fell, her pendant had slipped outside the apron: it was oval, made of gold, with a symbol engraved upon it. Asa knew at once that the dead man had not lied to her. She indeed was to have been the next victim.
She jumped up from the bed, seizing the hammer she’d concealed under her pillow. “It was bacon and eggs I ordered for breakfast,” she said in greeting. “Not my own execution.”
“What have you done with my corpses?” The film director was baffled. “And why is everything so clean?”
Asa gestured toward the furnace with the hammer. “I cremated them, and then I tidied up. Otherwise I couldn’t have got any sleep. They told me you’d killed them—hitchhikers, like me.” She twirled the hammer in her hand, her heart beating faster. The sight of those deadly blades coming at her was a stronger stimulus than any espresso.
“But I needed them to make Night of the Corpses, Part 12!” shrieked Angelika, leaping toward Asa.
The girl swerved out of her attacker’s path, fending off the chopper blow with her hammer. The sound of metal clashing against metal was exaggerated by the tiled surfaces of the killing room.
Angelika stabbed and chopped, fast as lightning, but Asa stayed unruffled, parrying or avoiding blows with agility, skillfully turning aside to snatch up a meat-hook, which she rammed into her opponent’s wrist. She did not let go of the other end.
The other woman screamed out, dropping the scalpel, and in the same instant she was hurled backward by a powerful kick in the chest. As she was still attached by the meat-hook, she did not travel far.
Asa dropped, dragging the film director down and over, rolling on top of her and driving the free end of the giant meat-hook into the woman’s back so that her right arm was anchored to her own body, the cleaver dropped by her nerveless fingers.
“Going to kill me, were you?” The girl hammered repeatedly at the woman’s left shoulder until it cracked. “I’ll teach you—”
Angelika screamed in pain.
Using half a dozen of the meat-hooks, Asa neatly fixed her opponent’s legs together and clamped her arms to her body. Blood flowed from where the sharp ends of the hooks had been driven into the woman’s torn flesh, but Asa was not overly sympathetic. “I’ll give the police a tip-off,” she announced. “I’m sure they’ll soon get the picture. They’ll find all the evidence they need.”
“Let me go,” whimpered the filmmaker. “Please—I’ve got money—”
“I’ll be taking that anyway. And the ghosts promised me a further reward.” Asa forced the ends of two more hooks through the skin under the woman’s collarbones, making Angelika moan in agony. “You wait here for the police.” With surprising strength, Asa dragged the woman over to the bed and from there attached her to one of the ceiling fixtures from which the corpses had been suspended.
Angelika screamed at the top of her lungs, spinning on the hooks, blood flowing down over her shoes from all the incisions and forming a sticky puddle on the freshly cleaned floor.
Asa shouldered her duffel bag and left the cellar. She conducted a thorough search of the mansion and pocketed several thousand euros in cash she found in a desk drawer.
As she was crossing the lobby, passing the display cases and the glass jars of curiosities, one of the containers started to glow, and then shifted, as if moved by an unseen hand.
The jar crashed to the ground in front of the girl, revealing a human rib cage; in the middle of the bones something shimmered metallically.
Is this the ghosts’ reward for me? Asa bent down and picked up two silver brass knuckles, each with beautifully engraved patterns. The business edge of each weapon was encrusted with sharp-edged, skin-splitting diamond fragments.
She couldn’t understand the symbols, but she was sure this was indeed her gift from the dead. She wiped the artifacts clean and put them in her pocket. These would be more use to her than a hammer.
The girl disguised her voice to call the police and then hurried away from the ghoulish mansion.
It would just be Angelika’s bad luck if the police did not open the cellar door in time to find and arrest her while she was still alive.
The murder victims would all be rubbing their ghostly hands with glee.
Germany, two kilometers south of Hamburg
“… so her soul will still be hanging around in the cellar as we speak, suspended on those pointy meat-hooks.” Asa wound up the horror story she had improvised to entertain the long-distance truck driver she was sitting next to in the cab of his thirty-two-ton truck. She was in her element.
“Epic! That’s some story!” Charon, as he’d said he liked to be known, shouted with laughter and slammed out a double fanfare on the truck’s horn in appreciation.
He was old enough to be her father, and looked like Lemmy from Motörhead, except just a little more debauched. His arms and throat were covered in tattoos indicating a penchant for violence and an interest in the occult. It didn’t bother Asa.
“You’re a tough one,” he crowed, laughing. “You know what? If it’d been me in that cellar, I’d’ve shit meself.”
“Not me.” She reached behind her and grabbed a sandwich out of her lunch pack: tasty wholemeal bread and a can of Coke, courtesy of the last service station.
“You mean, you really weren’t frightened?” Charon gaped. “Any normal person would have been scared witless!”
“Not me,” Asa insisted with a grin.
“Show-off!”
“No, really. That’s just how I am. I’m never scared at all, whether it’s bungee jumping or white-water rafting or being face-to-face with a poisonous snake or if someone dares me to eat blowfish. It used to drive my parents mad. I was always plunging headlong into the next adventure.” She politely suppressed a burp the Coke had given her. “I just think it’s all … exciting. My brother, on the other hand—he’s t
he quiet one. He runs an upmarket restaurant in Hamburg—it’s called Chagall. Ever been there?”
“Do I look like I go to fancy restaurants?” Charon glanced over at her. His expression had changed and he had a nasty look about him. “Right, then, Fräulein Fearless—what if I held a knife to your throat and raped you?” The lights in the cab dimmed.
“I’d smash your face in.” Asa grinned. “You planning on it?” She finished her last mouthful of sandwich and wiped her hands clean on her trouser-legs. “Okay, so are you going to try?”
Charon’s eyes took on a yellowish gleam and the tattoos grew brighter, as if burning into his flesh. One of the ink designs was exactly like the symbol on Angelika’s pendant. The pattern became more prominent. His skinny fingers clutched the steering wheel, bonier than ever, as the fingernails started to sprout. “I’ll violate your body and I’ll swallow up your soul,” he growled.
The truck with its cargo of chemicals was plowing up the autobahn at a good 100 k.p.h., heading straight at the truck in front.
Asa grimaced. “Keep your eyes on the road, or you’ll have nobody left to violate.”
Charon gave a dirty laugh. Blue flames shot from out of his mouth and played around Asa, surrounding her, but not burning. “I’ll fuck you so hard you won’t know what’s—”
Asa did not intend to end her days by crashing into the back-end of some random vehicle. She slipped one of the brass knuckles over her fingers and hit Charon full in the face, breaking his nose. He screeched like a stuck pig as dark-red blood spurted out of the ruined flesh of his face. Suddenly the tattoos all went pale.
She gave him a second blow to be on the safe side, just so he’d know who he was dealing with, this time on the mouth, driving back those blue flames.
Charon fell back, half-conscious.
“There you are, you see.” Asa leaned over and grabbed the wheel. She indicated as per the Highway Code and pulled out into the fast lane to overtake the slower vehicle. “That’s exactly what would happen if you tried anything,” she explained with a laugh as she wiped the bloodied knuckle-duster clean on his shirt.
Fearie Tales Page 15