by Guy N Smith
‘What's that place?’ Lynette pulled up, pointed down to where a sagging barbed wire fence separated a sheet of dark water from the rest of the landscape.
‘That's …’ Christ, he should have made a detour, kept her well away from this place. ‘That's the … Sucking Pit.’
She stared as though transfixed, lips compressed, fists clenched. Awe, fear, but the place commanded her fascination. A few photographs in the newspapers but they could have been of any pool anywhere. You had to see the Sucking Pit to appreciate its true atmosphere, smell its rank odours, feel its cold dampness sinking into your bones; hear its mute calling drawing you to its edge.
‘I want to go down there,’ Lynette Grafton said softly.
‘There's no point.’ Latimer felt Pamela's grip tighten on his arm. ‘We can see from here that your husband isn't there.’ Unless he's drowned, been sucked down into those foul depths where his body will never be recovered.
‘I want to see it for myself,’ she snapped, and added. ‘After all, we do own it.’
‘All right.’ There was no way she was going to be dissuaded. ‘We'll take a quick look. Mind how you go, though, this sand is soft and treacherous. An avalanche could bury us all.’
They descended in silence, picking their way carefully, sliding, filling their shoes with sand. Once they reached level ground Lynette increased her pace, pushed on ahead of them as though there was some urgency. She reached the wire, rested her hands on it, stared at the water. Not a ripple, not even a sparkle of sunlight. Just dead.
‘So this is the place,’ she breathed. ‘This is the Sucking Pit.’
‘Just a deep dark pool, that's all,’ Latimer lied.
‘There's something about it,’ she murmured. ‘It has a character all of its own. You can feel it. Like a … a person!’
Chris Latimer's scalp prickled. This was no place to linger. From those depths came death, violence and … sexual savagery! Jesus, he'd experienced the lot all too recently. Pamela shouldn't be here, none of them should.
‘Let's go and look for your husband,’ he said.
‘In a minute.’ She swatted at a cloud of midges; they backed off, came in again. ‘I want to look at it properly.’
He watched her closely. She appeared to be concentrating her gaze on the surface as though trying to see beneath it, every muscle in her body rigid. ‘I could stay here for ever.’ Her words were expressionless like a badly dubbed film. ‘It's so … peaceful.’
‘We'd better go.’ He almost grabbed her arm.
‘All right.’ She turned away reluctantly. ‘I guess we'd better find Ralph. But it would be a terrible shame to fill that pool in. It's local gossip and a few accidents that have got it a bad name. When you see it for yourself it's so peaceful. I shall come here again before long.’
He wanted to shout at her. ‘For Christ's sake, keep away from it. You don't realise what it does to people. I know!’ But he knew his warning would not be heeded. It was her pool and if she wanted to come back here then nobody was going to stop her.
They climbed back up the big mound and up on to the next one from where they could see the main quarries. There was nobody in sight. Grafton certainly was not around.
‘Your husband may have got a lift somewhere with someone.’ He did his best to sound convincing. ‘Or maybe he's walked on down to the village.’
‘Ralph doesn't walk anywhere.’ That flicker of fear was back in her eyes. ‘If he could drive his Range Rover to the loo he would.’
Despair. Walking on aimlessly knowing that they weren't going to find Ralph Grafton. A circular route which brought them back on to the Lady Walk, and then veering off on to the track which would take them up to the big house again. The Range Rover had a desolate look about it as though nobody would ever use it again, abandoned by its owner to gather layers of fine sand until it became buried, rusted away like a shipwreck on the ocean bed.
‘I'll wait in the house.’ Lynette stopped by the back door, no invitation to the others to come inside. ‘Ralph will surely be back before long. Thank you for your help.’ And don't go prowling about our land again because you're trespassing.
Then she was gone, leaving them standing there. Latimer turned away, took Pam's hand, began retracing their steps, those sunless rhododendrons bringing a shiver to the spine, the boughs clutching as they forced their way through as if trying to hold them there; imprison them until darkness fell.
‘I don't like it,’ Pamela whispered. ‘Did you notice how strangely she acted down by the Pit? It was as though … she underwent a personality change.’
He nodded. ‘I saw it. And it frightens me. We shouldn't have left her there on her own but what else could we do? If we stayed without invitation she would order us to leave, fetch the police probably if we didn't go. So we don't have any choice except to leave her there all by herself.’
‘I have an awful feeling that she'll go back down to the Pit,’ Pamela said. ‘As though she just can't wait. Finding her husband has become second on her list of priorities.’
‘And I wanted a word with him too.’
‘Can't anything be done about the Sucking Pit?’
‘I've been thinking.’ He pulled her close to him, wished that they were far away from this place that had so many terrible memories for him. ‘There are places like the Sucking Pit cropping up from time to time, haunted houses and the like. And what do they do? They exorcise them and most cases are successful.’
‘You mean … exorcise the Sucking Pit!’
‘And why not? It's worth a try. Tomorrow I'm going to try and contact the Church authorities, put it to them. But in the meantime we've got to keep an eye on Carl. He's had a bad experience already today and I'm not sure that performing tonight will be a good thing for him. But we've no more chance of getting him to cancel his booking than we have of preventing Lynette Grafton from going back to the Sucking Pit.’
‘Perhaps her husband will be home soon. Maybe he'll be able to keep an eye on her.’
‘Maybe.’ Chris Latimer was grateful to see the church again, the village of Hopwas nestling below it. ‘But you can feel the forces now, like living invisible things, even by day. It may even be too late to exorcise the Pit if the demons from its depths are already abroad!’
CHAPTER TWELVE
Ralph Grafton felt the bile rise in his throat, felt an urge to flee from this house. It was the smell of death all right which pervaded the hall, that unique odour which once you had smelled you never forgot.
But he stayed because he had his pride and in his own estimation of himself he wanted to make amends for last night. Locking himself in the bathroom was sheer cowardice. He had to put the balance right.
A sudden awful thought: maybe Minworth had panicked, committed suicide, was hanging from a beam upstairs. Hell, that would be the end of any plans for building in Hopwas Wood. He had to take a look, see for himself.
Halfway up the stairs he paused. Perhaps he was mistaken, had let his fears run riot again. He had imagined tappings and scratchings so it was conceivable that he had imagined the stench of death. All the same, he had to check for his own peace of mind. Minworth had probably decided to go into the office today in which case Grafton would have to wait until this evening. He had given way to panic all along.
Doors leading off the landing, all of them closed. Try them, one at a time, starting from the left. He licked his lips; there was a foul taste in his mouth, the taste of …
No, it wasn't. You're shit-scared and the only way to cure it is to look in every room and when you haven't found a body you'll know it was all in the mind. Go on!
A spare bedroom, judging by its unused look and the smell of mothballs. He drew the camphor odours deep down into his lungs, savoured their sharpness. But that other smell was still hanging around. Stronger. He heaved, almost threw up.
A box room. Stale because it was shut up most of the time. Suitcases and cardboard boxes stacked neatly, not a thing out of place. It figured;
May Minworth was obsessional, house-proud.
And then Ralph Grafton saw the body, knew instantly that his sense of smell had not deceived him!
He clung on to the handle of the bedroom door, almost sprawled headlong on the carpet. Christ alive, the room was like an abattoir! Walls and ceiling were blood-spattered, rivulets that had run and become sluggish, congealed, encrusted. His eyes were drawn back to the bed and that was when he threw up, bent double and spewing from an empty stomach, almost passing out.
That body; oh my God, it could have been anybody, totally unrecognisable, the head split and crushed, the trunk opened up so that the intestines were visible, some of them spilling out like butchers' tripe.
It was a woman so it had to be May. Staring between the splayed legs, the pink slit beneath the fuzzy hair seeming to grin, mock him. I'm yours, Ralph Grafton, if you want me. He didn't, oh Christ, he didn't even bloody well want to look, but he couldn't drag his eyes away.
Claude had killed her, it could not be anybody else. A fit of madness, flipping his lid after a lifetime of bitching and nagging. The final straw.
The stench of death was overpowering, had Grafton retching, but there was nothing left to vomit. It was as if the corpse had already begun to decompose. Then, amidst the sheer horror and revulsion he heard a noise, rather sensed it than heard it, a stealthy movement. Trying to turn, overbalancing … and that was what saved his life.
He felt the rush of air ruffling his hair as the bloodstained axe skimmed his skull, embedded itself in the oak dressing table, jagged splinters of wood flying in all directions. Leaping up, crouching, expecting another blow but the weapon was buried deep in seasoned oak so firmly that it defied Claude Minworth's frenzied efforts to free it.
Silence except for the stentorian breathing of the two men as they eyed each other, hate and bitterness fusing.
The Planning Officer wore only pants and singlet, a comical sight in any other situation. A ragged cut on his face that was still seeping blood, eyes bulging, staring, the veins in his forehead threatening to burst at any second.
‘I killed her.’ A confession that embodied pride and a boast, lust and hatred. ‘Me! I did it, Grafton, d'you hear me?’
Ralph Grafton nodded, swallowed and grimaced as bile scalded his throat. ‘If you say so, Claude, but why?’
‘Because she told me to.’
‘May wanted you to kill her?’ A homicidal maniac trying to justify his own killing. Grafton glanced at the axe stuck in the woodwork, dismissed the idea of getting it out. There wasn't time. Think of something else, man. Quick.
‘No, you fool!’ Spittle sprayed Ralph Grafton; any second those eyes of Minworth's would surely pop.‘She told me to kill May. The girl by the pool. The Sucking Pit!’
Grafton's brain whirled, brought with it a fit of momentary dizziness. Christ, the Sucking Pit was responsible for this, too. Homicide and insanity. ‘I see,’ he said lamely.
‘She told me to kill you, too, Grafton, but you came too soon. I wasn't expecting you until tonight, but no matter. I can kill you now. But I shall have to wait here until darkness before I can go to her down by the pool.’ His eyes wandered, flickered with uncertainty, rested on the axe and passed on; searching for another weapon, anything that was heavy enough to club a man to death or sharp enough to stab with. But there was nothing.
‘You're going to lose an awful lot of money if you kill me,’ Ralph Grafton tried to speak calmly but there was a tremor in his voice. Keep talking and try to think. ‘Your four grand's down the drain if I'm not around to give it to you.’
‘Money!’ Amazement, contempt. ‘I don't need money. She'll look after me.’
‘What's she like, this girl. What's her name?’
‘I … don't know her name.’ A film spread across Minworth's eyes, an instant cataract. ‘She's, she's …’ His breathing quickened. ‘She's beautiful. Young, with skin so soft and cool.’ A pleasant stirring in his lower regions, limp flesh starting to straighten out, stiffen. ‘Young and beautiful.’
Grafton noted the growing protrusion, the flimsy material of the other's pants beginning to push outwards. A distraction, play on it; exploit a weakness.
‘Have you screwed her yet, Claude?’
‘I …’ Minworth gulped, the very thought a shock to his system. ‘No-o-o … not yet … but tonight … oh yes, tonight, Grafton. She'll let me, I know she will because she loves me. She wouldn't ask me to go back to her if she didn't would she? Would she?’
Something pink and rigid popped out of the vent in the Planning Officer's pants, had him glancing down, an intake of breath.
‘She does things to you, Claude?’
‘Yes, she gets me like that because …’
Ralph Grafton leaped, a spring powered by flexed calf muscles, a human cannonball who knew his life depended upon his ability to fight and win. A clenched fist swinging wildly, a lucky blow striking the other's face, bone crunching on bone, splitting open that cut again.
Minworth shrieked with pain, staggered backwards. Out on to the landing, trying to get a grip on his attacker's throat. Grafton punched again, a short jab below the elasticated waistband of those briefs, heard Minworth's yell of agony. Fist moving with the momentum of a steam-piston; back, thud, back, thud, back, thud. A frenzy of blows, halting only when he realised that the Planning Officer was beyond resistance, a convulsing heap of flesh that barely had the strength and the breath to groan with pain. Only then did Grafton go back into the bedroom to fetch the axe.
He had to use every ounce of his waning strength to extricate it from the seasoned oak, and finally it came free with a rush that hurled him back across the room. Scrambling up he tested its weight, a trial swing. The blade was blunt but that would not matter because it was heavy enough.
Minworth's eyes opened, that film gone, only terror remaining. Fear because he knew what his fate was to be, how his plans had rebounded on himself. Sanity returned, grim reality replacing crazed fantasy. A background of blood and mutilation, all his own work. Murderer! Meeting Grafton's gaze, seeing in those narrowed eyes mercilessness, the lust for killing which had been his own until a few seconds ago. Now he could only plead mutely.
No, Grafton, you don't have to kill me. I can help you and you don't have to pay me a cent. I can guarantee the building permission will stand. We'll get that pool filled in. We'll …
Grafton stepped to one side, struck a devastating downwards blow with such ferocity that even the dull blade bit through flesh and neck bone. Instant decapitation!
The head parted from body, rolled. A gush of spurting crimson fluid splattering the mahogany banisters, making crazy patterns on the striped wallpaper beyond. A body that still moved, legs and arms twitching, fingers flexing as though making one last desperate effort to retrieve the skull and jam it back on the shoulders.
Slowly everything came to a standstill. Limbs ceased to jerk, gave up their hopeless quest, the flow of blood became sluggish, oozed, dripped steadily to the hallway below. Those staring eyes in the severed head dulled to sightless orbs.
Grafton expelled his pent-up breath slowly, let the axe fall from his fingers. He smiled, did not even tremble. Then he went downstairs and into the lounge, poured himself a generous measure of malt whisky from the cocktail cabinet.
He needed to think, to plan. He dismissed the idea of calling the police. It would be difficult to prove that he had struck in self-defence, that he hadn't murdered May Minworth before beheading her husband. He wished fervently that he had been granted that pleasure. Oh yes, he would have enjoyed taking that stuck-up snob of a bitch apart, screwing the arse off her into the bargain. He laughed, a harsh sound, took a swig of whisky.
With Claude out of the way things might be an awful lot easier; the rat was all set to desert the sinking ship anyway.
His mind conjured up a vision. A young girl, he couldn't see her face, only her body, naked unblemished flesh, waiting in the darkness of a balmy summer's night down by the Sucking
Pit. Eager. He would go to her, keep the appointment which Claude Minworth had made. She would be pleasantly surprised.
It was difficult to think clearly. Fatigue had him slumping into an armchair, closing his eyes because his head was throbbing abominably. He would sleep, there was plenty of time. Recharge himself for tonight and after dark he would make his way to the Sucking Pit where all his problems would be solved.
The village hall was packed to capacity by 9.30. Hot and stuffy; you only noticed the B.O. when you came in; after a few minutes you became acclimatised.
There was a small bar in the corner, just a hatch where drinks were slopped and served to a never-ending queue. A 1.30 extension and if you did not like dancing then at least it was somewhere where you could get a drink after the pubs had closed. It wasn't taking any trade off either the Chequers or the Red Lion so everybody was happy.
Carl Wickers moved into his fifth successive slow smoochy number, ‘The Shelter of Your Eyes’. After that he would do ‘Put Your Sweet Lips a Little Closer to the Phone’. And after that …
Kids, mostly, it was difficult to discern any particular couple beyond the glare of the stage lights. Chris and Pamela were somewhere out there. Samantha, too; he wondered who she was dancing with. Maybe herself. A pang of jealousy. He didn't like it when he couldn't see her, particularly after the strange way she had been acting this afternoon. Aloof, as though she was in a world of her own, hardly aware of his presence. Like something was eating into her.
‘Put Your Sweet Lips a Little Closer to the Phone’. A girl dancing by herself, her body swaying seductively just below the stage. He started, almost dropped a key. Samantha. No, it was Marian Preece, a similar figure, the same kind of body movement. Looking up at him, smiling.
He started again, his pulse rate quickening, remembered the summer before he'd met Sam, those few months when he'd dated Marian. One of the reasons why his marriage had broken up. Just seeing her sent a thrill like an electric shock through him. She'd been away somewhere; he thought (hoped) that she would not come back. Rumours that she'd left the village to have a baby. His. He did not know if that was true; if it was then in all probability it was his baby. But she had not contacted him, done the decent thing and got on with her own life, kept out of his. Until now.