The Face Stealer

by Robert Scott-Norton

  “Hello?”

  Just static.

  He ended the call, and looked over at Raquel. She had her phone to her ear—Diggins was trying not to notice that it was the latest model, better than he could afford—and she was talking into the handset.

  “Hello? Anyone there?” She ended the call and plopped the phone back in her bag, then noticing that she was being watched again, glared at Diggins and scowled. “What you looking at?”

  Typical.

  They both turned their heads when the main doors were pushed open, letting in a waft of cool air.

  A man walked in with no face. Well, obviously he had a face, but it was covered by the smooth plastic mask he wore that covered his features completely. His unkempt hair wafted in the breeze of the open door.

  “Please take it off sir, or I’m going to have to ask you to leave,” Alan said seriously. The mask was creeping him out. The man wasn’t moving though.

  “You heard him fella, a joke’s a joke.” Raquel shifted uneasily in her seat.

  The man turned to regard Raquel.

  “What you looking at?” she said, fingering the straps of her bag.

  “I’m serious sir, you need to take that off, or leave the premises.”

  The man spun around to face Alan once again and lent forward, tilting his head. Alan shivered. Whoever had worked on that mask had done a fantastic job. Alan could see the shallow indentations of eye sockets and a small mound where the nose was hiding and the colouring was superb.

  “Sir, I’m serious.”

  The man didn’t move.

  “Danny,” he shouted into the room behind him. “Would you come out here please?”

  A short man in a constable’s uniform hurried out of the back office, young and fresh-faced. “What’s up Sarge?”

  When Danny saw the man standing in the middle of the reception foyer, his eyebrows narrowed. “What’s going on then?”

  “Some joker. Won’t leave,” Alan replied and pressed the button to release the security door leading into the foyer. “I’ve told you, sir, that it’s time to leave.” As Alan approached he wrinkled his nose at the stench of body odour coming from the guy. There was something else curious about the man. On his left hand, he was missing all of his fingers: on his right, another two.

  Alan reached and put a firm hand on the newcomer’s elbow. The newcomer reacted and punched into Alan’s chest with such force that something cracked in his chest and his feet left the ground. He flew backwards and smashed into the coffee machine, dazed.

  Raquel screamed, hurried over, and helped him to his feet. Alan nodded his appreciation to her, then gestured that she should move out of the way. Danny raced into the foyer and grabbed the man’s arms, pinning them behind his back. The newcomer wrenched his arms free, then struck out again, whacking Danny away as though he were an irritating fly.

  A pain in Alan’s chest urged him to move cautiously. He suspected a broken rib from the punch. Slowly, he approached and with his hands out before him, spoke softly to the newcomer. “Calm down. You’re in a police station. I need you to stay still and calm down. Can you do that for me?”

  “Something’s happening to him,” Raquel said, a note of alarm in her voice.

  And she was right. Smoke wisped out from under the man’s clothing. Tendrils crept out like snakes escaping his body, before evaporating into the atmosphere.

  “He’s wired up,” Danny shouted and then ran back to the internal door which had just opened with more policemen on the other side. “Keep back!” Danny looked back at Alan, who looked in turn at Raquel. She ran for the exit, no longer thinking of her precious daughter or Burbery handbag that lay forgotten by her chair.

  Alan stared at the newcomer, not quite believing what he was seeing, and just as he decided that running for the exit would be the sensible thing to do—the man exploded.

  Max felt drained. Part of him had been busy convincing himself that the police had made a mistake; Heather wasn’t dead and all this was a mistake. But after seeing the pictures of himself dragging a body out of his own van, that creative part of his mind gave up and let Max sink into despair.

  Chrissie had argued that the interview should be terminated whilst she consult with Max, and Payne had argued against that.

  Max couldn’t care less. He doubted that anything much mattered anymore.

  When the mobiles started to ring, he was yanked out of his thoughts. The policemen looked apologetic as they reached into their jacket pockets and retrieved their vibrating phones. Lines formed between Payne’s eyebrows as he checked the number on his, before rejecting the call. Nixon did likewise. Chrissie’s wasn’t set to silent, and it played an unfamiliar tune as she fumbled for it in her bag. “Sorry about this,” she said. “It’s in here somewhere.” Eventually, she found it, and after checking the number, rejected the call as well.

  The four of them looked across the table at each other in silence.

  “What just happened?” Chrissie said.

  “Caller withheld?” Nixon asked.

  She nodded. “Why did they all go off together?”

  “Maybe a problem with the network.”

  Payne reached over to the recording device. “I’m pausing this interview at eleven forty five for a comfort break.” He pressed the stop button, then stood up. “We’re in the middle of an interview here. Let’s not have our phones go off again. Let’s take a fifteen minute break.”

  The others nodded and Nixon and Payne left the room. The same constable that had escorted Max from the cells arrived and stood inside the room. Chrissie stood to leave. “I’ll get you a coffee.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Of course you are.” She touched him lightly on the shoulder, then hurried to the door.

  Max sat and watched the door close.

  Minutes passed and Max glanced between the door, the constable, and the desk surface.

  Suddenly, the room shook and Max instinctively grasped the edge of the table as a loud whomph assailed his ears. The constable rocked and steadied himself against the door, his face ashen. Max leapt to his feet like his chair had been electrified to see the door crashing open revealing Payne in the doorway.

  Footsteps ran past in the corridor. Max looked at Payne, unsure what to do.

  “Stay right there,” Payne said, then to the constable, “get him back to the cells.”

  The lights went out. The only natural light in the room came from a narrow window set high into the wall opposite the door. Max looked past Payne into the corridor and saw that too had been plunged into darkness. Voices accompanied the footsteps, moving quickly, a stream of haste and uncertainty.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Payne had grabbed a man in uniform by his elbow.

  “God knows, sir. An explosion I think. Someone sounded the panic alarm in the reception area.”

  “An explosion?” Payne was incredulous, but let the man go to where ever it was he was running to.

  Max moved away from the desk and stood closer to Payne. “An explosion? What did he mean?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “Like a bomb?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m going to find out, and you’re still going back to the cells.”

  Payne hurried out of the room leaving him alone with his escort.

  8

  Nixon was in the nearly empty canteen when the explosion knocked him off his feet. He fell forwards flinging his hot coffee before him, thankfully not scolding himself in the process. A pressure wave hurt his ears and as he scrambled to his feet, he had to rest against a table to stop himself falling again.

  “What the hell?” he muttered.

  The lights flickered then went out.

  Nixon ran to the serving counter and lent over to see Shirley the canteen lady cowering by the dishwasher, her eyes wide with fright.

  “What’s happening?” she said.

  Bill Sanders, a sergeant, raced for the door. He glanced behind him at
Nixon, not needing to say anything.

  “Get out the building. Do it as fast as you can.”

  She nodded and started getting to her feet.

  Nixon left her and caught up to Sanders.

  “Whoah, slow it down,” he called to the sergeant, a balding, heavy-set man in his late thirties. “We don’t know what that was.”

  “Let’s go and find out,” he replied firmly.

  “We need to evacuate. Get everyone out.”

  “OK. Let’s do it then.”

  Beyond the canteen doors, the corridor was a tunnel of debris and dark shadows. The wall to the right of them that had been part of the reception back office, had exploded out into the corridor leaving a gaping hole like a wound. Nixon could see all the way through into the reception foyer. Ceiling tiles had dropped to the floor and a fluorescent lighting tube hung from the remains of the ceiling supports. Golden sparks spat out from cavities in the ceiling. The air was thick with dust and it clung to the inside of his nostrils as he inadvertently inhaled it.

  Sanders made his way through the hole in the wall, the doorway now a dangerous looking mouth of twisted metal frame and smashed door.

  At the far end of the corridor, two more people appeared.

  “Keep everyone away from this area. It’s not safe,” he shouted, and they kept back.

  Nixon followed Sanders through the hole, and that’s when he saw the first body. He was half covered in ceiling tiles and a grey dust clung to his skin. Rivulets of blood trickled from a wound on his forehead. His eyes were open, but not blinking.

  It was Danny Addison. Nixon had spoken to him on his way into the station that morning. Nixon scurried over the debris on the floor, and gently lifted the tiles from Danny’s body.

  “Hey, there, what happened?” he asked softly, checking the man’s neck for a pulse. After a few seconds, he found it.

  Sanders was on the other side of the reception desk, into the main foyer. Nixon couldn’t see him, but could hear him moving around. Everything sounded different now. It was like after it had snowed and the snow swallowed up loud noises. He could hear the sounds of outside. Car alarms in the distance.

  “Oh, god,” Sanders cried. “There’s another two bodies here. Where are the paramedics?”

  Nixon hadn’t thought to call, presuming someone else would have taken care of it. What if they hadn’t? He dug his hand into his pocket and pulled out his mobile. No signal. He held it above his head and moved it around in a slow arc willing the signal bars to appear, but they remained stubbornly absent.

  Danny’s bloodshot eyes flicked open, staring into the distance beyond Nixon. How safe was this room? Nixon glanced up at the ceiling but it didn’t look like it was about to fall down any more. It would be better to get the paramedics to assess him first.

  He wiped away some of the dust from the Danny’s face, careful not to go near the source of the trickling blood. He dug around in his pocket and found a tissue that he dabbed against the wound on his forehead. A flap of skin moved as he dabbed and more blood started to run out. Oh god, I shouldn’t have done that.

  “Can you hear me Danny?”

  The man’s eyes sought Nixon’s voice.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “I think I fell over,” Danny said, the words came slowly and painfully. He coughed, then winced.

  “You’ve done more than just fall over. But don’t worry, the paramedics will be here soon.”

  “He exploded.”

  “Yep. There’s been an explosion.”

  “No,” Danny said with a fierce determination in his voice. He grabbed Nixon’s arm with a surprisingly powerful grip. “The man without a face exploded.”

  Man without a face.

  He wanted to think it was only words of a man dazed by trauma, but an image flashed into his mind’s eye of Heather’s body under the pier.

  “How are you doing over there Bill?” Nixon shouted over the reception desk.

  Bill spoke quickly. “Two bodies. Both dead. It’s Alan Diggins. Well, from what I can tell. There’s a woman too. Member of the public I think. They’re both dead.”

  “I’ll be right back,” Nixon said to Danny and ran to the door leading to the reception foyer. The door had been blown off its hinges and lay in broken pieces on the floor. Nixon watched his steps as he walked through to Sanders.

  Alan’s mangled body lay against a wall, the skin on his face and hands bloody and battered. Nixon had to tear his eyes away from the bloody mess as he caught a smell of burnt flesh and fought the urge to vomit.

  “Are you sure he’s dead?” Nixon asked.

  To give Sanders his due, he didn’t hesitate, getting down on the floor beside his colleague, and feeling for a pulse on his neck. He shook his head and stood up. “What the hell happened?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Sanders walked to the second body; a woman in a similar broken state to Alan. Again, he checked for a pulse, and once again, he stood up and shook his head.

  There were the sounds of movement to Nixon’s left and he looked to see a couple more uniforms in the blown out wall. Nixon hurried over.

  “We need to start evacuating. One of you sit with Danny down there, make sure he’s still with us. Has anyone seen the paramedics?”

  “No. I’ll call them.” This from a scared looking constable Nixon didn’t recognise.

  “OK. Good.”

  Sanders stood and looked beyond Nixon towards the smashed out windows at the front of the station.

  “Are you OK Bill?”

  “Thought I saw someone outside.”

  In the centre of the room, something caught Nixon’s attention and he went to take a closer look. Tiles from the ceiling cracked underfoot as he made his way deliberately slowly across the space.

  “What is it?” Bill asked.

  “I’m not sure.” Nixon peered down at a strange pattern of dust and scorching on the tiled floor. Circular lines radiated out from a central point, pushing waves of dust into small mounds.

  “Hey! You can’t come in here,” Sanders shouted to someone behind Nixon.

  Nixon turned and saw a woman. Long black unkempt hair hung in lank curls down her back. She wore business attire that had seen better days. Her blouse hung outside her skirt, covered in dark stains. Nixon had seen revellers on Friday nights staggering home in better condition.

  Nixon wondered why Sanders was frozen to the spot, staring at the woman with his mouth hanging open.

  And then she turned her head and Nixon understood.

  She was faceless, like Heather their murder victim. Faceless, like the man Danny said had exploded.

  “Keep away from her Bill,” Nixon said calmly. On no account did he want anyone to get suddenly alarmed by anything. Nixon stared again at the woman, trying to work out if she could have anything strapped underneath her blouse. He couldn’t help but think of the news reports he’d see on the TV about suicide bombers in Gaza.

  The woman turned her head towards Nixon.

  “She’s looking at you. How is she doing that?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Sanders paused. “You need to take that mask off. Then we can talk.”

  “It’s not a mask.”

  “What do you mean it’s not a mask?” Sanders snapped. “Of course it is. Look at it.”

  “Danny said the explosion was caused by a man exploding. A man without a face.”

  Sanders took a step away from her.

  “I don’t see any explosives. Are you sure?”

  “No. But don’t take the chance. Move.”

  But Sanders still wasn’t moving.

  “What’s going on?” Danny said from the floor. His voice barely more than a whisper.

  “Don’t worry mate. We’re sorting it out.”

  Sanders raised his hands in supplication. “We don’t want to hurt you. We want to help you. Why don’t you come with us and we’ll get you looked at?”

  The woman took a step t
owards the back office.

  Sanders took a step in the same direction.

  She hesitated and Sanders waited.

  “Bill,” Nixon warned in a low voice. “Don’t mess with it.”

  “If she’s as dangerous as you say, we can’t let her get inside.”

  The woman picked up her pace and stepped into the back office.

  Danny gasped. The constable with him stood and held his hands out protectively. Suddenly, Sanders ran and grabbed the woman around the shoulders, pulling her back into the foyer.

  Nixon ran to help, taking an arm and pulling her backwards.

  The element of surprise didn’t last long. The woman looked at Nixon and yanked her arm free from his grip. As soon as it was free, she swung it back down. The side of her arm connected with Nixon’s chest and he fell away, stumbling over the debris on the floor and falling over.

  Nixon saw a fierce look on Sander’s face, and then the woman grabbed his hands and pulled them away from her body. Sanders yelled in pain. Nixon thought he heard the crunch of bone. The intruder spun round, facing Sanders, and grabbed his head in her hands. Time seemed to slow down as Sanders head was twisted violently to the side. A crack of breaking bone. Nixon saw the shocked look on Sanders face as he crumpled to the floor.

  Nixon yelled his outrage, and looked around for something to use as a weapon. His hands reached for a long piece of metal that looked like it had come from the ceiling. With a surprising turn of speed, he let his arm swing wide. The metal spun in a heavy arc. The woman didn’t try to move aside and it connected against her back. She fell to the floor.

  But before Nixon could strike home his advantage, she scrambled to her feet and had her hands gripped around his throat. Nixon knew this was the end.

  A siren blared from outside. Blue lights span across the darkened foyer. The paramedics had arrived. The woman hesitated. Even without being able to see any expression on her face, Nixon sensed she was rattled.