by Matt Hilton
She fought me. But I had the leverage, and she had no purchase. Her heels kicked and battered at the sides of the tub. She squirmed and her nails raked my hands and clawed at my face. Yet second by second her movements grew feebler. Choking someone to death takes time, and it’s ugly. Her eyeballs protruded and her tongue was caught between her teeth. Her features were beetroot red. She couldn’t get as much as a breath. I continued squeezing, moaning at the effort. Finally her hands fell away from mine and her feet stopped drumming. She lay inert in the old bathtub.
I thought I should keep squeezing, but a noise caught my attention. The racket Sarah made during her death throes had drowned it out, but now that she was still, I heard the other banging clearly.
Somebody was hammering on my front door.
36
The Hammer and the Crown
‘You’d best come in, Mr Muir, there’s something you need to see.’
For a second or two I expected my landlord to decline. On the way to answer the door I’d called by the ground floor living room and grabbed a cloth with which I’d wiped the blood off my face and hands, but it was obvious to anyone that I was covered in fresh cuts and grazes.
Muir was poised to unlock the door with his master key when I pulled it open. He still held the key extended like a cowboy with a six-gun, shooting from the hip. Snowflakes had settled on his bald head, and had melted on the lenses of his spectacles. I nodded backwards, to motivate him to follow. ‘You were right. It’s a good job I came home as soon as I did. Someone had broken in after all. There’s a bit of a mess, I’m afraid.’
Concern flitted over Muir’s face. My disheveled state concerned him, but I doubted it was as much as he was worried for his property. Or how much the repair bill was going to be. ‘You caught them?’
‘No. They were in the back alley as I suspected, and had climbed the wall into the yard. They got onto the roof of the outside toilet and broke their way in through the stained glass window. When I got home a couple of minutes ago I surprised them and they went out the same way. I made the mistake of trying to grab them and cut myself up pretty badly on the broken glass they kicked loose.’ I showed him my wounded left hand as evidence. It welled blood. He didn’t need to see my hand, not when my face was bloody too.
‘We should call the police,’ Muir counselled.
‘I have; they’re coming,’ I lied. And walked away.
Behind me, Muir stepped inside the house. The open door and busted window caused a wind tunnel. His clothing was tugged by the strong breeze.
‘Close the door,’ I warned him. ‘I don’t want the draught pulling loose any of the large bits of glass left in the window frame. Can you help me?’
Muir followed me to the bottom of the stairs. From that angle we could only make out the left most edge of the broken window. I’d closed the bathroom door. Snow swirled down the stairs. I indicated the sheet of plyboard lying on the hall floor, where Sarah had pulled it earlier. ‘Can you help carry that up with me? I’ll put it over the busted window until a glazier can come out. The snow’s piling in and doing more damage than the bloody broken glass.’
‘We should wait until the police get here,’ Muir said. ‘They’ll want to inspect the damage.’
I made a play of thinking his wisdom over. ‘You’re right. But I could still do with a lift. We could put the board on the landing up there, ready for when the police are finished.’
He thought about it for only a fraction of a second. Then he nodded, and bent to retrieve one end the board. He fed his fingers under the board and lifted his end with a grunt of exertion. He turned his head to regard me, blinking at me in expectation through his glasses. I showed my right hand and the claw hammer I held.
He wasn’t quick to catch on.
‘You’ll need some nails,’ he pointed out.
‘No. I think this’ll do the job.’
Even as I drew back my arm he didn’t understand my intention. I did: I’d watched my shadow self raise the hammer when I too had bent to lift the same board earlier. The shadow prophecy had shown me what I must do. The claw hammer was swinging for Muir’s head before he could even croak in alarm. He dropped the board, and it scraped down his shins. He tried to dodge the descending hammer, but he was wedged by the board, and only stumbled. The hammerhead struck him behind his right ear. It knocked his glasses awry.
Muir stared back at me in shock.
A viscous drop of blood ran down his neck from behind his earlobe. I watched it. Fascinated.
‘Wha-’ Muir asked. Then his glasses slipped fully off and clattered on top of the plyboard. He made a stunned grab for them but missed.
I hit him again.
This time the hammer found his crown at the point where a few straggles of hair tufted up. It sounded like the single ringing stamp of a shod hoof on concrete.
Muir went to his knees. His toes were still trapped beneath the board, held there by his weight bearing down on the wood. He trapped himself in place like that while I swung back the hammer for a third strike.
His scalp split, and the bone beneath was forced into his brain. Blood welled in the crater, then Muir slipped forward and went belly down on top of the board. I winced. I bet the edge of the board tore the flesh from his shins before his feet popped free: not that it mattered because my landlord was beyond pain.
I hadn’t thought things through.
Now I had two corpses to contend with, and I’d no idea how I could possibly dispose of them. It didn’t really matter, because at that moment I felt invincible, unstoppable, so who cared? The monster inside me was exhilarated. Only that cowering portion of me that remained locked at the back of my head was screaming in horror at what had happened, and what the consequences of my actions was going to be. If I’d listened to it, then maybe I would have stopped, but the monster forced me to move: if ever there was such a thing as demonic possession then I was living proof. I laughed at the notion. Ghosts I could accept, even spectral visions of future events, but even in my insanity I couldn’t credit anything as ludicrous as a belief in demons.
There was a clot of blood, a few short hairs adhering to the hammerhead. I dropped it on Muir’s corpse, turning for the stairs. Things weren’t ended yet with Sarah. Not if the shadow man was to be believed.
I trod up the stairs. My footfalls were heavy. A few flakes of snow fluttered round me. Beautiful. I pushed open the bathroom door and looked in on Sarah. She was still in the bath. Her eyes were closed, her mouth open. The tip of her tongue was just showing between her teeth. She’d bit it. I watched for a few seconds longer, then retreated onto the landing and turned for the next landing. My feet crunched over splintered glass. I thumped up the short flight of stairs, then swept aside some of the larger chunks of crimson glass and sat on the top step, perched ready to swoop for when Sarah gave up her act and tried to creep from the bathroom.
She wasn’t dead.
How could she be? I’d already seen what would happen next, and I looked forward to the chase.
I waited.
Finally I heard a soft clunk.
Scrapes.
Heavy breathing that Sarah immediately caught and held between her teeth. She was trying to be quiet, but her movements sounded thunderous to me. I smiled at the inanity of it. She was wasting her time. Instead of acting like a timid mouse, she needed to flee like a gazelle.
Picking up a chunk of glass, I lobbed it behind me. It struck the wall near to the room I’d once designated for a storage closet. It broke into pieces and they tinkled down. One bit struck a door making a hollow bang. It wasn’t much of a diversion, but it worked.
Sarah poked her head around the jamb. Her hair was tussled. Cute. Her eyes were huge. They were cute too as she peered down the stairs towards the front hall and the promise of freedom. I trusted she’d been awake long enough to hear Peter Muir come inside, and neglect to throw the bolts and snib back on. She leaned forward, gnawing her top lip as she decided if speed outweighed silenc
e in this matter. She checked up the stairs, saw me sitting there grinning like a gargoyle and her mind was made for her. She squawked, and bolted from the bathroom. I was up and after her in a split second.
Our feet made a drumroll on the stairs. Sarah, who’d been scared before, was now stricken by terror. Before she was only frightened of what I might be capable of, but now she had first hand experience. She screamed at the top of her lungs. She should have saved her breath. She made it to the front door, but I was only a pace behind her. She hit the door and it rattled in its frame. I braced my hands either side of her, keeping it shut. She tried to turn, to hit out at me, but I gave her no room. I slipped on the bolts. She ducked under my hands, and I allowed her a second of freedom. Then I grabbed her by her face, two hands enfolding her the way the shadow man had Brianne, and slung her down the hall. She didn’t fall this time but kept running. That was until she saw Muir’s corpse and the bloody indentations in his baldy skull. Her fingers danced over her face as she moaned in dismay. I paced towards her.
Sarah skirted around the corpse and rushed for the back door, but it was locked. I stood, my toes touching the soles of Muir’s boots, blocking her route. There was only one place she could go and Sarah took it. She ducked through the hole beneath the stairs and down into the basement. I didn’t bother rushing after her. I knew exactly where she was going to hide.
I took my own good time as I descended into that dark subterranean space.
37
Fox and Hound
But for one lambent slice of light from the coal chute the rest of the basement was pitch black. The snow piling over the hatch I’d screwed into place dulled even that tiny glimmer of light. I didn’t need to see where I was going though. I picked my way past the dank adjoining rooms and into the old Victorian kitchen. My shoes scraped grit along the floor as I progressed. I couldn’t see the cooking range, the dresser with its stacked dishes, or the huge butcher’s block table at the centre of the room. But I could make out two faint shimmering forms conducting their own exploration of the nighted place: if only they’d known then how things would end here. I smiled to myself, stayed to the right and followed the empty floor to the right corner where the door to the old cold pantry stood slightly ajar.
‘Come out, come out, wherever you are,’ I quipped.
Of course Sarah didn’t answer.
The darkness was her friend. Stay quiet, stay concealed and I’d never find her. If she’d listened closely to what I told her I’d witnessed that time in the basement she would have understood she was onto a hiding to nothing. I entered the cold room, and found its name suited it to a tee. My frosted breath almost glowed before my eyes.
‘Sah-rah!’ I sung softly.
The silence was palpable as Sarah held her breath.
‘Oh, Sah-rah! I know that you are in here,’ I lisped in the same singsong voice.
My senses were on high alert. If Sarah had managed to get her hands on a weapon she could cold cock me before I was even aware of her presence. Not that I was duly concerned about being bashed over the head. I knew from past experience that when she fled this room I would be hot on her tail. ‘Sah-rah! Where are you-hooooh?’
My hip touched the bench shelf I recalled was on the wall. I kept contact with it, sliding my body along, allowing the shelf to lead me to the furthest wedge of the room where it projected under the front street. The atmosphere was icy. And that same strange stench of decay filled my senses. Momentarily repulsed, I held back. But there was nothing for it; I had to flush Sarah out of hiding. I reached out with both hands and found I was deeper in the wedge than I realised when my fingers scraped the wall on both sides. I held back a grunt of satisfaction, then crouched to sweep my hands back and forth in the space before me.
That was when Sarah burst from hiding. Not from in front of me as I’d expected, but from behind. She’d been crouching below the bench shelf even as I scraped past her. She must have found a grain of bravery, because she didn’t simply flee while my back was turned. She launched herself against me, driving me face first into the wedge. As I hit the slimy wall, I screwed my eyes and mouth tight, but it wasn’t enough. The slick wetness of the mould engulfed my features, and the fetid stench of it was all around. I pushed back, shouting in disgust, and swung an elbow at Sarah to force her off my back. I needn’t have, because she had already disengaged and ran for the exit. I blundered after her, wiping the vile muck from my face. When I could finally see beyond the scummy stuff on my eyelashes I was almost face to face with the shimmering, translucent glow from my past. That naïve Jack Newman swiped at me as I wove around him, and his insubstantial hand passed through me. A shock like a static charge went through my body, but I ignored it, heading immediately to the right and around the large table.
Sarah’s shimmering past echo led me directly where I knew to go. The cupboard adjacent to the cooking range. The door would be open: it had to be. I pushed directly through the shimmering glow, and went for her present solid form where it crouched in complete darkness. My own past echo would be hot after me, hoping to save Sarah from my malicious intent. How absurd, how wickedly inappropriate now!
The physical Sarah launched herself from under my groping hands, and fled. I turned to go after her even as her echo folded under the lunging hands and excitable – but soundless - screams of mine. I ignored them both and rushed after her, confident about where she’d got to this time. It was an unfair game of fox and hound considering I didn’t have to sniff out her trail when I had foreknowledge of where she’d go to ground. I turned immediately to the right and entered the small room in which the dumbwaiter was situated. The poor thing was so desperate that she was actually trying to clamber up into the shaft. I caught Sarah in my arms and pulled her back to the centre of the small room.
‘Caught you,’ I said, leaning close to whisper in her ear.
‘For God’s sake, let me go, Jack.’ Her strength waned in the surety that the game was indeed at an end.
‘After what I’ve done? How can I?’
‘You have to let me go,’ she cried with little conviction.
‘No. That’s the last thing I must do.’ I looked upwards, as if I could see through the floorboards to where Peter Muir lay leaking his brains on the plyboard. ‘I just killed a man. Murdered him, Sarah. I can’t let you run off and tell anyone that now, can I?’
‘I won’t tell,’ she sobbed.
‘Of course you will...given the chance. You’re the type that was disgusted that I told a few white lies to get a day off work. You told me you hated lies, remember? I can hardly expect you to keep the knowledge of a murder to yourself. Hmmm? And not only one murder. There’s also Naomi, don’t forget. Hell, I even tried to strangle you to death just now. No Sarah. You won’t tell, but only because I won’t let you.’
‘No, Jack, you can’t. Please…this is not you!’
‘Actually, this is me. I see it now. That other Jack Newman, the snivelling weakling you felt sorry for, then thought you could play for an idiot, he was the impostor.’ I released her so that I could touch a hand to my heart. ‘I am the real Jack Newman. It’s time to accept the truth, Sarah.’
‘No, no, you’re just mixed up. It’s your illness that’s making you…’
I pushed her away from me. ‘I’m not ill. Those pills you are all so keen for me to take? They were poisoning me, smothering me, keeping me down, fucking burying me. But I’m free now. And poor little Sarah, I’m going to stay that way.’
I bunched my fist. She couldn’t have seen me, but she wailed, expecting the inevitable blow. I allowed my hand to fall.
‘Maybe I should thank you,’ I said.
She cried, didn’t respond to my one small kindness. It didn’t matter.
‘I should thank you because you helped me open my eyes to the truth. I’d lost my way, you see, clouded under the fog of drugs. I’d lost my belief that there were powerful forces at work in this world. I didn’t believe in ghosts any more, and you s
howed me how wrong I was. You even warned me that Naomi’s was a vengeful ghost. Hell, she wasn’t only vengeful; she was there all along trying to warn you that it wasn’t safe here. She wasn’t haunting me, Sarah; she was the angel on your shoulder. But do you know something: I have to thank her too. Because if I hadn’t grown to accept her lingering spirit, then I wouldn’t have grown to accept the other spectres appearing to me. Those shadow figures, I know what they are now. They’re us. They’re the consequences of our actions, a foreshadowing of events.’ I glanced past her to the dumbwaiter shaft, ‘Which reminds me.’
I cuffed her round the head, knocking her down.
‘Wait there and don’t dare move.’
I stepped quickly to the shaft and peered up. The dumbwaiter platform blocked most of the view up to the top floor, but if I squinted I could make out the faintest shimmer of my past echo, that weak spineless version of Jack Newman, as he peered down, cocking his ear to what he thought might be the voices of trespassers in his basement. Fucking idiot. I grabbed the pulley rope and yanked it with all my might. The dumbwaiter platform responded by falling out of control down the shaft. I stepped back as it first became wedged in the shaft, causing a billow of dust and cobwebs to cover me. I spat grit from my teeth, then returned to the shaft, not yet finished with weakling Jack. I grasped the pulley rope and gave it another angry tug. The platform fell and hit bottom with a loud crash. I leaned into the shaft, saw the shimmering head and shoulders and screamed at the top of my voice, and laughed as it jerked back in terror.