The Pact_A gripping psychological thriller with heart-stopping suspense

by S. E. Lynes

  Ah. Post’s arrived, Emily says, unlocking the door. I know what that is. Come in, dear.

  I follow. The front door is light blue and there is a red-and-white gingham curtain across the window. It is so pretty.

  I like your house, I say. It looks, like, country-ish.

  Did I tell you I grew up on a farm? We moved here when Mummy and Daddy passed on.

  Inside, there is a sugary smell, like someone’s been baking.

  Pop your coat off if you like, Emily says.

  I take off my jacket and hang it on the hook. The hall carpet is patterned with flowers, thick and soft under my feet. I follow Emily into the kitchen at the back. The kitchen is kind of shiny, and under the baking smell it smells of lemon Flash, like she’s just cleaned it this morning or something. There’s a pretty back door the same blue colour as the front door, with the same pretty red-and-white gingham curtains on the window. On the countertop, next to the cooker, there are scones on a cooling rack. On the table on a tray are a butter dish, cups and saucers and a pot of honey with a cute little wooden spoon thing sticking out.

  Emily tells me to sit down, so I sit at the table. She opens the fridge and pulls out a jug with the same pattern as the cups and puts it on the tray. I notice that one cup has blue flowers and the other one has orange. She fills the kettle. It is one of those ones that go on the gas. I wonder if it will whistle. The cooker is dark brown and old – it is one of those ones that have the stove and the oven all together. But it is clean. Everything is clean.

  Emily lights the gas with a match and blows it out. Under her breath she is humming a tune I recognise… ‘Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf’. She picks up a sharp knife from the countertop and holds it up. It gives me a fright.

  She chuckles. No need to be afraid, dear. Let’s see what in this parcel, shall we?

  She slides the knife along the packing tape and lifts out a box. It is not shoes. It is another gnome; at least that’s the picture on the outside. She opens the box and pulls out a plaster gnome with a red hat and a fishing rod. It is exactly the same as the others and I think this makes Emily a bit batshit. But then I knew that.

  Here you are. It is the gnome she’s talking to, not me. She holds it up and wrinkles her nose like when you speak to a baby in a pram. Welcome to your new home, she says in a baby voice. I think we’ll call you Barnaby. She looks at me. What do you think, Rosie dear? Is Barnaby a good name for a gnome?

  Yes, I say. I wonder if the others are all called Barnaby too, but I don’t ask in case she says yes. That would totally freak me out.

  You can go and play with your brothers very soon, Barnaby, she tells the gnome. But first Rosie and I are going to have our tea, all right?

  I look at my knees, where they poke out of my jeans. I feel my cheeks burn. I’m embarrassed for her, not me.

  The kettle whistles. Emily makes the tea and puts the pot on the table. She gives me a scone on a plate, the same flowery pattern. Everything is so pretty and fresh and nice.

  Now then, this jug is the most terrible pourer, she says. Help yourself to butter and honey, my darling. She takes the cups over to the sink and pours the milk while I cut my scone in half and spread some butter and honey on it. The honey spoon isn’t a spoon – it’s a wooden stick with a spiral thing on the end.

  Shall I be Mum? Emily is back at the table. She picks up the teapot and pours tea into my cup. Sugar?

  No thanks. This scone is delicious.

  Why thank you!

  She talks to me about scones. How she shouldn’t eat them because they go to her hips. She tells me that the secret to baking good scones is not to over-handle them. I nod even though I’m like, why do I care?

  Isn’t that right, Barnaby? she says, to the gnome, and laughs.

  I sort of laugh too, but then I proper laugh because I think of telling you and Auntie Bridge about this later – hilarious.

  Drink your tea, Emily says.

  I drink my tea.

  There, she says, holding hers with both hands, her top lip puckering like a drawstring purse. Can’t beat a nice cuppa char! And Owen will be here any moment.

  Who’s Owen? I ask.

  Owen? she says, as if she’s thinking of something else. He’s my brother, dear.

  I wish I didn’t have to meet her brother. I wish we didn’t have to have tea; I just want to pick up the audition notes and get home to you. But it would be rude to say that, so I don’t.

  Emily smiles – but not at me. It’s as if she’s smiling at someone or something I can’t see in front of her. And she’s stopped talking again.

  I do a massive yawn. I feel soooo tired, like, proper exhausted.

  There is a buzzing sound. It is coming from the window. It is a wasp, banging itself against the windowpane over and over. There is a plastic bottle on the windowsill. It has been cut in half and the top half has been put into the bottom half, upside down. At the bottom of the bottle is what looks like a load of runny honey. There are dead wasps in the honey, which look gross. The alive wasp buzzes along to the bottle top and crawls round and down the home-made funnel thing. It can smell the honey. I want to call out to it – stop! – but I don’t like wasps, and anyway it is already at the bottleneck.

  It buzzes, hovers, drops into the honey.

  There are three cups and saucers on the tray now and I wonder if there were three before and I just didn’t count properly or whether Emily put another out while I wasn’t looking. I think about how this morning Emily said, I hope he’s handsome, even though I’ve never told her about Ollie, and this gives me a pain in my stomach, but I am so tired, so tired, I could put my head on the table and sleep.

  From the back garden there’s a squeak like a gate opening.

  That’ll be Owen, Emily says.

  The wasp buzzes. It is stuck in the honey. It will die there, like the rest.

  The back door opens.

  Well, well, well, young lady. I recognise the voice. When I turn, I see that it is the baldy man, the man from the café, the one with the dirty glasses. He smiles at me and says, Fancy seeing you here.

  Hello there, Owen, says Emily. You’re just in time for tea.

  Fifty-Two

  Bridget

  The front door is covered in black dust, cobwebs thick as angel hair. The brass letter box has greasy fingerprints on it, but apart from that it is as though no one ever uses this door – never goes in or comes out. Bridget’s chest is tight; she locks her knees to stop her legs from trembling. She raises her fist to bang on the glass panel but stops herself. To the left of the door, there is a grey plastic doorbell. She pushes it and hears it chime in the hall, a ridiculous, anodyne sing-song. She is a caller, she thinks. She is delivering a parcel. She is selling organic veg, she is canvassing for the Labour Party, she is a Jehovah’s—

  A figure is making its way towards the door. A man, lumbering. Bridget’s guts flip.

  ‘Just a moment.’ The voice is well spoken, with the slight tremor of age. The door chain rattles. Him, the predator, worried about his own security. The door opens a crack. His face is pale. He is anywhere between mid fifties and seventy. The top half of his large plastic-framed glasses is the colour of cinder toffee, the bottom half clear. The lenses are dirty. Behind them, his eyes are artificially huge, giving him a blinking, bovine expression.

  Her fingers splay against her thighs. She grips her left wrist with her own right hand.

  ‘Hi there,’ she says. ‘I’m… my name is Bridie and I’m… erm… I’m just…’

  ‘I’m sorry, dear; I’m a little busy. Could you call back later?’

  The man makes to close the door, but Bridget jams her foot inside just in time. The base of the door bangs against the metal toecap of her boot, making the rest of the door shudder.

  She gives a strangled, apologetic laugh. ‘I’m so sorry, but I really need to speak to you. May I come in?’

  She shoves the door with her shoulder.

  ‘You can’t do that
,’ the man protests. ‘I say! You can’t barge into people’s homes like that.’

  She shoves again. Dimly she is aware of the chain fitting giving, falling, clattering on the bare floor. She is marching down the hall, her boots loud on the boards.

  ‘Look here,’ he calls after her, following her towards what must be the kitchen. ‘If you’re the police, I’ll need to see a warrant. Young lady!’

  The kitchen matches the grimy exterior. There are spider plants on the windowsill, all manner of bric-a-brac, a horrid Home Sweet Home sampler in a cheap thin frame, a black transistor radio, an old-fashioned spice rack, pale grey with dust, the likes of which Bridget has not seen since the seventies. She turns to face the man. He is hovering at the kitchen door. If anything, he looks afraid.

  ‘I’m not a young lady,’ she says. ‘I’m a grown woman, and I’ve come for my niece.’

  The man’s hair is no more than a few strands. Beneath them, his scalp shines. He blinks his pale, enlarged eyes as if in confusion. But he is not confused – Bridget can feel it.

  ‘There must be some misunderstanding,’ he says. ‘Who are you? You’re frightening me.’ He sucks air in, hisses it out, begins to hop from foot to foot – a strange, anxious dance.

  Doubt crowds Bridget’s senses. The kitchen is run-down but clean, actually, in the main. The draining board winks with soap bubbles. There is a plate on the draining rack, a butter knife.

  ‘I was washing up,’ the man says, as if to explain. But Bridget hasn’t asked him a question.

  ‘I’ve traced a fake Facebook account to this address,’ she says. ‘My name is Bridget, and I have strong reason to believe that you have my niece, Rosie Flint, here. I believe you lured her to a café pretending to be a young man called Oliver Thomas. Ollie.’

  The man shakes his head, pulls at the zip of his cardigan. He is still blinking, twitching like a woodland creature. But he is not a woodland creature. His face, she sees now, is pink and rough with eczema, and he smells musty, as if he never leaves the house. The house too smells stale: of bodies, unwashed clothes and skin.

  But the moment’s silence sends up another wave of doubt. Bridget scans the kitchen. Is it possible she has made a horrible mistake? The man is hovering at the kitchen door. If she wants to check the bedrooms, she’ll have to get past him. He is older than she thought he would be, but she will hit him if she has to.

  ‘You have to leave,’ the man says, his voice louder. He is still sucking air in through his teeth, expelling it, sucking; still hopping from foot to foot like a child. He pulls his index finger, making it pop, does the same to his other fingers, one by one. His eyes are wild, skittish.

  Bridget takes a step towards him. Still sucking in and hissing out air, he moves behind the table, grips onto the back of a chair.

  ‘Get out,’ he says. ‘Get out of my house.’

  He is afraid of her. Good. Bridget runs for the kitchen door, back into the hallway. At the front door, beneath the coats, she sees the sole of a shoe lying on its side. A boot. Rosie’s Doc Marten boot.

  She runs back into the kitchen. ‘You fucking worm.’

  He scrabbles around the kitchen table, clutching at the chairs. Bridget darts one way, he runs for the door; she reverses, heads him off, lunges at him, sends him falling into the hallway. She’s on top of him; she turns him over and punches him, hard, in the face. His nose bleeds on one side. Her hand explodes in pain. She feels another, sharper pain in her thigh and springs back.

  He is holding a kitchen fork. Her jeans darken at the thigh. Blood. He has stabbed her.

  ‘Get away.’ He jabs at her, ineffectually. She catches his wrist and twists his arm, forcing him to roll onto his front. She pulls his arm up his back.

  ‘Let me go,’ he shouts. ‘You have no right to be in my house. I’m going to call the police.’

  ‘Go right ahead. In fact I’ll call them for you, why don’t I?’

  She pushes his hand up towards his shoulder blades, hears the crack of his arm as it breaks.

  The man yells. He starts to cry, giving off low sobs of self-pity. She plucks the fork from his fingers, spins him back and punches him again in the face. He wails, raises his hand to his cheek. She brings her boot to his chin, feels the metal toecap connect with bone, hears the dull thud of his head on the bare boards. His glasses skitter towards the kitchen door. His jaw is slack. Broken, she thinks. He is out cold.

  Bridget runs for the stairs. ‘Rosie!’

  She is on the bed in the master bedroom, curled up, her back towards the door, apparently asleep. The room smells worse than the kitchen: dense, floral – lavender? – masking the heavier smell of old fabric, unwashed sheets. Dust motes twinkle in the weak sunlight. The windows are filthy: grey netting, brown floral sixties-style curtains. The whole place is a museum. Rosie’s wrists and ankles have been bound with duct tape. Her mouth too is sealed with the same silvery tape. But she is clothed. She is wearing the same clothes as this morning, and Bridget closes her eyes a moment in the hope that this means something.

  Bridget climbs onto the bed. The mattress sinks beneath her knees. She holds her finger to Rosie’s nose and feels heat. One breath, two breaths, three. Alive, alive! Alive, thank God.

  ‘Rosie! Rosie darling. Wake up. It’s me – it’s Auntie Bridge!’

  Nothing.

  Bridget scoops her niece from the bed and throws her over her shoulder. She is so light and thin. She is no more than a child.

  In the hall, there is no sign of the old man. From what she imagines is the living room, she hears a groan. She should go after him, finish him off. She should cut off his balls as she promised and take them back to Toni on a plate. But she has come to save Rosie – that’s all she has come to do. The police can take care of this fetid excuse for a human being.

  She opens the front door. Her lungs are burning. From behind her comes an incoherent shout. She turns – and stares into the twin holes of a shotgun.

  The man has the gun trained at her chest. His nose and mouth are dark with crusted blood. His mouth droops, limp and odd. One lens of his glasses is cracked and one arm hangs slack, as if it has no bones in it. He adjusts the gun; it’s obviously heavy, awkward for his one functioning arm. His hair, such as it is, falls outwards in wisps from his bald head, giving him the appearance of a drug-addled clown.

  ‘Wait,’ Bridget says, laying Rosie down at the foot of the stairs, straightening up, raising her arms in surrender. ‘All right.’

  ‘U’air’.’ Upstairs? Possibly. All vowels; he is unable to make the consonants. Yes, he is gesturing with the gun towards the stairs, his eyes creased in pain. The gun is heavy. Too heavy to use?

  Bridget glances outside, to the sunlit street, the sky blue beyond the houses.

  ‘Look,’ she says, ‘I’m not going to call the…’ She turns and kicks, quick and high. The gun flies out of the man’s hands. He grabs for it, too late, clutching at nothing but air. Bridget plants her boot into his solar plexus, sending him falling back. She lunges for the gun and turns it on him.

  He is flailing on the floor. More vowels come from the slack mouth – incomprehensible, save for the palpable terror beneath. He tries to push himself up, cries out in pain.

  Bridget cocks the safety, aims – and shoots. Both barrels empty into the man’s chest. Blood flies, spatters against the wall. His head thuds against the bare boards. A burgundy stain swells on the front of his beige checked shirt. Only then does she feel pain flash up the back of her thigh.

  She throws the gun to the floor and picks up Rosie, throws her over her shoulder again and runs.

  Fifty-Three

  Toni

  I don’t know how long I stared out of the front window. Time mushroomed, became static. I sat and sat, useless, in my chair, phone in my lap, ears pricked: for the doorbell, for your voice calling out, Mum! I’m back! For sirens. Anxiety is this, my love: waiting. I had spent every minute since the accident waiting for this, for this very thing to happen,
and now it had. The unnamed something bad that had shimmered at the heart of me for so long had become a solid thing. It had words to name it: you had been taken. I had been so wary of Emily that I had focused all my misgivings on her, and all the while behind the scenes you had met and befriended a stranger. And now he had you. He had you, and all I could do was wait.

  Your auntie had been gone half an hour. I dialled 999. I rang off. Thirty-five minutes. I dialled 999. I rang off. Forty-one minutes: once more, my thumb hovered over the 9…

  The phone rang.

  Fifty-Four

  Bridget

  Bridget reaches the van, digs in her jacket pocket for her keys. The sun is fierce. She feels the heat of it on her head, feels sweat trickle down the sides of her body, down her face and neck. A dull pain in her leg where that evil worm put a fork in her, another strip of pain up the back – a torn hamstring, most probably.

  It is difficult trying to unlock the back of the van with Rosie over her shoulder. She drops the keys, has to squat to pick them up. Drops of sweat land on the black tarmac. With a shout, with all her strength, she stands up again. If she could only set Rosie down, untie her, put her in the front cab, but there is no time. She’s safest in the back.

  Finally, with a clunk, the key turns and the van doors swing open. There are old bed sheets on the tin floor, which she uses to protect the amps, the stage equipment. She wishes she had blankets, cushions, but the sheets will have to do. She lays Rosie down on them, taking care not to bang her head. The angle is wrong; she feels her back twinge and is overtaken by a fit of coughing. Too many roll-ups; too many sneaky late-night joints. Hands to her knees, she coughs once, twice, and straightens up. She is dying of thirst. Rosie is out cold. He must have given her chloroform or something, God knows. Bridget pulls at the sheets and tries to roll the edges, make some kind of buffer, but it is hopeless. She will have to drive slowly. Rosie will be rolling around; she will bruise. But there is no time.