by Jacob Rayne
It always asked for him to bring it food. He knew now that it preferred to feast on humans, but it would eat anything, even animals, although children were its favourite delicacy. He didn’t question the voice, he knew that to do so would mean a fate much worse than death. The owner of the voice was kind to him and his fellow tramps. It would even let them share in the flesh of the victims they brought it and promised it would make them immortal too.
Dwayne’s mouth was parched, an inevitable side-effect of the litre of vodka he slung back every morning to slake the raging thirst he had for blood. He wiped a filthy hand across the back of his lips. His belly gurgled. He saw a couple walking through the woods and smiled. Had the idiots not heard the rumours about the farm?
They were asking for it really. Moving carefully through the angular trees, he made his way down the hill towards them. His concealed companions joined him.
‘Hey, what was that?’ Vivian said, wheeling round.
‘Probably just a rat or a bird,’ Chris suggested.
She didn’t see the tramp until she was almost upon him – his dirty trench coat blended in brilliantly with the dormant trees.
He grinned, exposing teeth that were in dire need of a dentist’s time and attention. The breath he exhaled onto her smelt like the butcher’s bins after the hottest day of summer.
‘Hi, there. Could you help a fallen man out and give a couple of quid? I haven’t eaten in days.’
Vivian looked to Chris. She was a sucker for a sob story.
Chris’s brow furrowed.
‘Come on, Chris, help the poor guy out.’
‘Why don’t you give him something if you’re so bothered?’
‘Left my purse at home.’
Chris scoffed. Muttering curses under his breath, his hand delved in his pocket for some change. His jeans were a little too tight and he struggled to get his hand in without taking his wallet out, knowing the bulging billfold would be like red rag to a bull.
‘Sorry to inconvenience you,’ the tramp smiled.
Chris pulled his hand out of his pocket. His wallet landed on the path. He cursed, louder this time. The tramp’s eyes lit up when he saw the wallet which was bursting at the seams with Chris’s cash-in-hand takings for the month. Close to two grand in twenties and tenners. The pound coin in Chris’s hand suddenly seemed like an insult in light of the wallet.
The tramp let him know he’d seen the wallet then took the pound coin.
Fuck him, Chris thought. It’s my bastard money. He’s lucky he got anything.
‘Thank you so much,’ the tramp said, failing to sound sincere.
Chris quietly turned the air blue while he struggled to get the wallet back into his pocket. Gonna have to get some jeans that fit.
While he struggled, the tramp darted forward and snatched the wallet. He moved surprisingly fast for a man of such withered appearance.
Before Chris could raise a hand to stop him, the tramp was twenty yards up the path.
‘I’ll meet you back here,’ Chris shouted to Vivian as he ran past.
The tramp’s filthy coat blew behind him in his wake like a cape. He looked like the world’s worst superhero fallen on hard times.
Chris was thankful for the time he’d put in at the gym recently. His lungs were coping well with the exertion.
‘Wait ’til I fucking catch you, you scheming twat,’ he bellowed.
The tramp didn’t reply, just kept running further into the woods.
Vivian shuddered as a cold wind blew through her flimsy coat. Her hand darted into her pocket and dug out her mobile phone.
While she checked her messages, she heard the crack of a branch and looked round to see another tramp standing by the side of the path.
‘I haven’t got any money if that’s what you want,’ she said. ‘One of your friends has just stolen my husband’s wallet.’
The tramp apologised.
She turned so she could see him and went to put the phone back in her pocket, but the nervous tremor her hand had taken on made her miss. The phone clattered to the floor.
The tramp bent down and picked up the phone and handed it to her. She grabbed it off him. As she did so, his other hand clamped around her wrist. His long, dirty nails sunk into her forearms, drawing half-moons of blood. She screamed and flailed her other arm at him.
He shrugged off the blow and slammed his fist into her nose. Blood ran down her face. Tears blurred her vision. The next thing she knew he had a curved blade against her throat.
Another tramp had emerged from the treeline and he was making his way towards her. She began screaming and wailing.
Spurred on by the terrifying feeling of having a blade held to her pounding jugular, she threw her elbow back violently, sending the man behind her crashing to the floor.
She threw a punch at the tramp approaching from in front of her, catching him on the ear. The blow hurt her fist, but made no difference to him.
Behind her, she heard the first man getting up, but she couldn’t move fast enough to stop him. The blade sunk into her back, the tip poking out through her stomach. The blood that poured down her belly was hot and much darker than she’d have expected. The tramp sunk the sickle in again. She managed to scream this time.
The tramp shoved her to the floor and raised the sickle for a third attack. Vivian’s scream trebled in volume when she saw the vivid crimson splashes of her own blood dripping from the blade.
The first man grabbed Vivian’s legs and started dragging her along the path. A third tramp appeared and assisted him as they took her into the woods towards the farm.
V
Chris had seen the tramp who’d taken his wallet disappear into the farm. The place was sprawling and seemed to have more hiding places than he had time to search. He was aware that he’d left Vivian out in the woods and was eager to get back to her, but he was loathe to lose a couple of grand to some dirty chancer.
He screamed obscenities at the top of his lungs when he realised that he was going to struggle to find the tramp. His scream was echoed by another from further down the path.
‘Vivian,’ he shouted and headed back to where he’d left his wife.
Vivian’s pain seemed to come in waves, sometimes it was far away, almost manageable, but then it would swamp her body and mind and leave anything but screaming impossible.
The bastard who’d taken Chris’s wallet was nowhere to be seen. She hoped she’d live long enough to see her husband again, but she was aware how farfetched this possibility was.
Some dim vestige of sense came to her, and she realised that this could be the thing that saved her. She opened one of her eyes a little and saw that they were heading for a large, rusting corrugated iron barn. It looked like the scene from a nightmare. The two tramps dragging her grunted in unison.
It was eerie, as though they were both replying to some unseen voice. They dragged her into the main part of the barn, past a tractor and a combine harvester that had both seen better days, and opened a heavy wooden door in the back wall of the barn.
They slung her onto the dirty floor. One of the tramps sunk his foot into her belly, making her breath whoosh out and aggravating the stab wounds, while the other pulled back a heavy wooden trapdoor in the centre of the floor. The darkness below the trapdoor was so thick that it seemed to bleed out into the barn, contaminating, choking, everything it touched.
The tramp shuffled back to her, his eyes now seemingly pupil-less and white, chilling her blood as they bored into her.
They hoisted her up to their knee height and leg-and-winged her into the pit. She fell for what seemed to be a very long time – no light penetrated the pit so she couldn’t see how far she’d gone – then slammed the floor so hard it winded her. Her fingers clenched, trying to pull herself to an upright position. They slipped in the stinking filth that lined the floor of the pit.
She managed to pull herself up and forced her hand into her pocket. She pulled out her mobile phone easily –
her jeans fit much better than her husband’s – and prayed it wasn’t smashed beyond all recognition.
The screen was cracked but it still lit up. The meagre light was as bright as sunlight in the oppressive dark. She hastily thrust three nines on her phone and dialled. The operator tried to calm her down, but she quickly blurted out, ‘I’ve been kidnapped and taken to the farm on the edge of town. Help me.’
She heard something shuffling in the gloom beyond the phone’s light. She moved the beam up slowly, wanting to delay seeing the ominous presence. The light lit up bare bones and swill that was a mixture of blood and rotting flesh. She cried out.
‘Miss? Are you still there?’ the operator asked her.
The torch beam continued its path over the floor, revealing more bones. Something bloated and foul loomed out of the darkness against the back wall. It was on her before she could get a good look at it. Her screams echoed down the phone for a few seconds before abruptly cutting off as the creature’s powerful jaws ripped her throat open and greedily drank her blood.
Chris looked around in vain, his eyes trying and failing to penetrate the treelines on his search for his wife. A few drops of blood decorated the path, startlingly colourful against the bleak backdrop of dead trees and mud. He followed them and stifled a cry as he saw the trails of blood beneath his feet.
Thinking fast, he grabbed a stout tree branch that had fallen prey to gravity’s cruel but inevitable hand. It looked perfect for caving in skulls. They’d fucked with the wrong family. He’d find his wife or he’d die trying.
His eyes flicked between the horizon and the trail of blood spots that led towards the barn. Groaning, he followed the trail. After a second’s thought, he called his friend, Baz, just so someone knew where he was.
‘Baz?’
‘What is it, bud?’
‘Some shit’s going down, my friend. I’m in the woods by the barn.’
‘Shit, man, what the fuck ya doing there?’
‘Nevermind. Listen, they’ve got Vivian.’
‘Shit. You want us to come down? We can be there in five minutes.’
‘I think I’ll be ok. I’m mad enough to take the fucking world on, mate. Just come down here if you don’t hear anything from me. Torch the place for me, yeah?’
‘Will do, mate. Hope you find them. Bash some heads in for me.’
‘Yeah, will do.’
He cut the call and hurried into the farm.
The piece of branch seemed to increase in weight the nearer Chris got to the farmhouse. The heavier the better, as far as he was concerned, it would do more damage that way.
‘What have you done with my wife, you fucking cowards?’ he bellowed into the still air.
He heard only a strange scuttling sound in reply. He decided to head to the big barn at the centre of the farm. According to the rumours, that was where the mysterious creature lurked. See if it was so tough with its head all fucked up.
He was looking forward to seeing it and punishing it for its part in his wife’s disappearance.
When he reached the end of the small outhouse building, a hairy tramp came round the corner and threw himself at Chris. The impact knocked him back, but he reacted fast, adjusting his legs to set up a power swing. The branch nearly went right through the tramp’s head, knocking him out instantly. He toppled forward like a domino.
‘Any more of you hapless cunts fancy a go?’ he bellowed. ‘Now bring me my fucking wife.’
A second tramp came flying out of the next shed. Chris’s swing clipped him on the back of the head and sent him falling. His charge was merely slowed though and he took Chris off his feet. The tramp landed hard upon his chest, his dirty fingernails clawing at Chris’s eyes and throat. Chris spat blood and tried to roll but the tramp had him pinned.
Two more tramps came round the corner. One picked up the tree branch and started to rearrange Chris’s face. It felt like his brain was spinning inside his skull. Warm blood ran down his face. Everything went hazy but he realised that he was being dragged towards the barn.
He smelt fresh blood, vast quantities of it, as they entered the room with the hole in the floor. In that instant he knew that the rumours about the barn were true and he knew that there wasn’t much chance of escape.
The filthy hands of the tramps dangled him over the side. He hung, facedown, staring into the gaping black maw of the pit. He couldn’t see the bottom, but he could hear snuffling noises like something fat and sick struggling to draw breath. His arms and back slammed the wet wall of the pit as he thrashed, but the tramps had a firm hold of his feet. He was going nowhere but down.
While he thrashed, one of the tramps produced a knife. The tip gleamed in the dim light.
The creature in the pit let out a hungry cry at the sight of the blade. Chris tried to squirm away, even if he could drop he’d at least have a fighting chance in the pit.
The blade sunk deep into the back of his right calf, and carved a blazing path across his Achilles tendon. His blood felt hot and sticky as it ran down his back, his neck, his head and dropped into the pit. Something in the darkness below made greedy slurping noises.
The knife flashed again, severing his other Achilles in a tidal wave of gore and agony. The tramps held him until the flow of blood had slowed a little. Then they dropped him into the pit.
Weakened and immobilised by his injuries, Chris hit the damp base of the pit. The last thing he saw was the half-eaten head of his wife, then the monster’s powerful jaws tore his head clean off his shoulders.
VI
‘There’s something going down at the farm,’ one of the receptionists at the station blurted.
‘Let’s get out there,’ Campbell said.
Jones frowned. ‘You ever heard of crying wolf, lad?’
‘Yes, but it could be genuine.’
‘Monsters in a barn that feed on blood and human flesh. That sound like something that’s likely to happen in the lowly north east of England to you?’
Campbell chose his next words carefully. ‘Well, I’m going to go.’
‘Really?’ Jones said, moving his face closer to Campbell’s. ‘And say the rumours are true. How long do you think you’d last out there with those things? Two minutes? Three?’ He snorted laughter.
‘You mean you haven’t actually checked the barn?’
‘Of course we haven’t checked the barn. Osmo’s a fucking lunatic, Campbell. I learnt that the first time his family died. Now forget about the fucking barn or it’ll cost you your badge.’
‘What do you mean, “the first time his family died?”’
‘He didn’t tell you? I thought you two were best buddies. Those kids he drowned weren’t his. Osmo’s family were killed at the barn a few months back.’
Campbell slunk off to the file room. He snuck Osmo’s file from the cabinets and checked where he’d been sent.
The name of the asylum was the Crow’s Tail Facility for the Criminally Insane. Campbell told Jones he was going out to help with traffic control by the town hall.
‘Finally, something worthwhile. Good lad.’
He punched the details for Osmo’s new place of residence into the sat nav and set off.
At the main desk he managed to convince the receptionist to let him in to see Osmo.
‘As long as you don’t get him too excited,’ she said. ‘He isn’t having one of his better days today.’
Campbell nodded and let her buzz him through.
When he saw Campbell, Osmo hurled himself to his feet so fast that he almost crashed into him. He snapped the crispest salute that Campbell had ever seen and introduced himself as ‘Admiral Oscar Momente,’ pumping the policeman’s hand with an enthusiasm rarely seen.
‘So how can I help you, Officer Campbell?’ he said, wiping a hand across the nicotine-stained grey moustache he’d grown since being admitted to the psychiatric facility.
‘There have been more killings.’
‘I told you there would be. I can feel thos
e filthy fingers probing at my mind, trying to get me to take it fresh meat. Luckily, I’m managing not to take most of my meds. That forces it back. Sobriety is going to be my best weapon in fighting it. Discman too.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I find if I play some loud music on my headphones it keeps the voice out of my head.’
‘Useful to know. Why didn’t you tell me that your family had been killed up at the barn?’
Osmo shrugged. The gesture was so carefree that Campbell almost laughed. The gravity of the situation stopped him.
‘Didn’t think it was relevant.’
‘I’m on my own here, Osmo. The rest of the cops aren’t going to set foot on that farm. They still haven’t checked it out.’
‘Cocksuckers.’
Campbell allowed himself a laugh at this. ‘I need your help to understand how this works.’
‘Basically there are tramps collecting bodies for the monster. They snatch people, children, pensioners, anyone, young or old, could be a victim. Everyone needs to keep their wits about them or they could find themselves up there.’
‘Do you know how to defeat it?’
‘No idea.’
‘Osmo, I’m going to head off. I’m supposed to be on duty. I’ll get bollocked if they find out I’ve snuck off here.’
‘Yeah, of course. Good to see you again. You take care.’
‘You too, Osmo.’
Campbell didn’t know what to think. He collared one of the doctors on the way out, to see if they could shed any light on Osmo’s condition.
‘He seems to really believe his delusions,’ Campbell said.
‘Well he would do, most schizophrenics have utter belief in their episodes. He is a very sick man. He may be charming and likeable, but you need to remember that he is in here for a reason.’
Flashes of Osmo remorselessly slamming the stake into the man’s chest while blood gouted onto the concrete struck Campbell like a flurry of punches. He shook his head to rid it of the gruesome images.