For One Night Only
Page 22
Rhianna screamed. “Get away, you crazy bastard,” she yelled.
He stopped and looked at her. Her outburst was the game changer.
He took one step.
Then he toppled forward as a figure tackled him to the ground.
Tom.
He was on the floor using the strength in his arms as the lower part of his body dragged along behind him. Where was his wheelchair? Would it have helped? She didn’t know.
The man lashed out, but Tom pulled him to the ground. Now they were on a level footing. Tom would knock the man out. Kill him even.
They would be saved.
Rhianna lay close to Tyrone, protecting his body with her own. Her whole being trembled as she watched the two men wrestle on the ground. Tom’s arms flailed and his face was strained as he struggled to take the advantage. He took the crazy man in a stranglehold around his neck. Then, just as he had him, the man struck out his elbow and knocked the wind out of Tom.
He fell backwards and the man got free.
He rose up and offered one last kick into Tom’s stomach before he fled from the room.
.
Kiki had fled from the house, searching for a way to escape. Somewhere on the left side of the headland, there might be a place she could climb down. She searched and searched in the dark but there was nothing that resembled the steps on the other side. She was trapped. They were all trapped. A crazy man was on the loose and she didn’t know what to do, where to go.
She looked out over the bay to the horizon where through the storm, the moon still shone, reflecting on the water like a runway to heaven.
Then, as she turned back towards the house where Rhianna and Ty were hiding out, her knees gave way when she saw Drake Fisher come out. He had blood on him, and he was staggering as if he’d just been in a fight.
A howl of despair escaped her lips, and as the wind carried her voice to him, he stopped and turned.
“What have you done?” she screamed using the last ounce of strength she had left, and he paced towards her like a raging devil. He was. He was the devil.
“Kiki,” he growled as he lowered his hands and placed them around her neck. The touch of him repulsed her. He was bent over her as she struggled pointlessly on the grass. The rain pelted them, but she was half sheltered by his body. The rain fell over his head like a halo as the moon shone behind him, and as he squeezed the breath out of her, she thought she saw angels before her eyes where the devil had once been.
Chapter Fifty
The party was well and truly over.
The women were gone.
Marigold was the only one left in No.5. She hugged the wall while her eyesight cleared of the pixels that had momentarily blinded her. She’d experienced it before, the day she’d met her husband Wilbur, fifteen years ago.
She had been standing at the bus stop waiting for the twenty-nine, after going for an interview for a bookkeeping job, before she met someone and got married. That’s how it was in those days. The women weren’t as independent as they were in that modern world, in 1981. In the old days, the women had just a basic education and were simply raised to care for the menfolk, while the husbands went out to earn the bacon. That day, she’d eaten nothing, out of nerves more than anything. She’d had a successful interview with an up and coming firm from Taunton. It was a company that was going places, the man behind the desk said. And as she stood waiting for the twenty-nine to go back home, pixels had formed in her eyes, like they had that night in Seaview. She’d fainted outright and when she came to, she was in the arms of the man behind the desk, the man who had interviewed her. Wilbur. They were married one year later, and he had protected her ever since.
Now, with her eyesight impaired, she was alone in a room with a killer and just a pair of scissors as protection.
He was standing right in front of her, just looking at her, as if he was waiting to see what she’d do. He was insane, but how could she know what was going on in his head as he watched her? And what would he do if she ran? Would she even see her way in the dark? Would he catch her as she stumbled? Would he kill her from behind? Strangle her maybe, or even use her own weapon against her. She would die. She’d never see her husband or her children again.
But she didn’t want to die. Not there like that.
“What do you want from us?” she said.
“I want Mrs Lang.”
“Eva?” she gulped. For a moment she was relieved he wasn’t after her.
“Yes, Eva,” he said plainly. “I want Eva. I want to kill her.”
A sob caught in her throat as she imagined the man killing Eva, maybe doing to her what he’d done to the Butlers. He had no boundaries. After what he’d already done, it didn’t it matter to him how much more pain he inflicted now. He would go to prison. It wouldn’t matter how many he killed. It wouldn’t matter. He would have no remorse. He would kill them all and that would be that.
Marigold hugged the wall as it became her only support. It was her strength as she stood there facing the killer.
He took one step towards her.
This is it.
She saw his eyes glaze over as if he was experiencing his own blurred vision and his shoulders were slumped as if he was thinking about something else. His hair clung to his head in a greasy wet mess and his speckled, spotted skin shone as the raindrops on his face picked up the reflection of the moon outside the windows.
Without further consideration, Marigold knew it was time to put an end to this man’s nonsense. With one deep breath, she raised the scissors and plunged them into his right breast.
Eva didn’t know Rolf’s house. She couldn’t remember a time she’d ever set foot in it. and now, there she was alongside her husband’s mistress, going through the backdoor like a thief in the night.
Jade was muttering her fear incoherently. Eva was forced to tell her to shut up, but deep down, she was glad to have someone, anyone with her while she went through the motions of hiding from a killer on the loose.
It was dark in there and it was cold. Outside, the storm raged, making the terror of their plight more terrifying. But it was also a blessing. It gave her something to hang onto, a cover, a sound in the quiet of the night to fill her ears beyond the beating of her own heart.
She took Jade’s hand and guided her through the kitchen to the sitting room, towards the front of the house. There, at the window, they kept low as Eva reached up and peered through the curtains.
She could see her own house. No.5. The door was open and through it came the killer, staggering, with a large patch of blood on to his right breast. He seemed unperturbed by his wound, carrying on as if it were nothing. He turned his head and almost as if he was looking straight at her, Eva watched the shadow of his body become a giant on the front façade of the house when a vehicle’s headlights illuminated Seaview.
He threw his arm up to cover his eyes from the glaring light. Then he went to the side towards the steps to the beach.
Descend at your own peril.
Chapter Fifty-one
Kiki awoke on the grass. She had survived the strangulation. She wasn’t dead. Oh, god she was alive. Her throat was burning like hell itself, but her limbs moved, and she could stand, and she could walk, and she could run.
As she came around the side of the garden to the front, she was forced to turn away when she was blinded by headlights from a vehicle behind the gates. She stood on the lawn like a vulnerable deer caught in a beam of light. She looked, covering her eyes with her hands. Then the light dimmed.
The rain came down over the minibus where, returning from their trip, the men attempted to work the keypad to open the gates. They must have looked at the estate. They must have seen the lack of light. They must now realise the power was out.
Then, out of Rolf’s house, two women ran, like crazy, howling, charging demons waving down the bus as it waited at the gate. A man got out. It was too dark to see who.
Unable to get inside, he was rattling the gat
es as the two women, Eva and Jade charged towards him, their tears mixing with the rain.
Now, Kiki was running too, running towards the gates.
Constance was alone in the cave. She was cold. Really cold. It was pitch black in there and through the opening looking outward, the rain spilled down like a tropical waterfall.
She was safe.
The sea was pounding against the rocks and only half of the beach was visible while the water swelled and the waves crashed over and over, washing the sand.
She wondered when it would be safe to leave the cave and go back to Seaview. Were the others okay? She didn’t know. She had abandoned them. She had abandoned her friend Marigold, the woman who had gallantly supported her when she had no one else…except for Gladys. Poor Gladys. She didn’t deserve to die that way.
She pinned her back against the rock wall, waiting, and then, as if all her nightmares had come at once, the man…the crazy man slipped inside the cave and hid as if he too had seen his own nightmares.
Her breath was all but lost. It failed her. The air from her lungs had strangled her. Soon she would turn blue and slip away, just like Gladys.
Then she began to laugh.
Hysteria.
She couldn’t stop. She almost choked with it…the laughing. Her eyes bulged as her mouth turned upwards, smiling and laughing and chuckling and croaking. She couldn’t help herself. She felt as crazy as he was.
Then he turned around, and his eyes widened when he saw her hidden in the shadows, laughing.
Drake Fisher was no one’s fool. The woman called Marigold, had stabbed him with the scissors, just as he had stabbed his mother. Scissors were so handy. They did everything. He wholly approved of the woman’s tactics. She was a worthy opponent, not like the other women who’d escaped like scurrying rats. No, she was a survivor, and she’d do anything to stay living. Not like his mother when she walked around on eggshells all the damn time. No, this one was brave, like him, Drake. She was a leader. Someone to admire. Yes, he liked her.
Shame she had to die.
Before he could unscramble his thoughts, she’d pushed him and rushed away, going through the back door.
Damn, he thought as he looked at the blood on his chest. He reached upwards and pulled out the scissors. It hadn’t hurt.
He was injured, but he wasn’t dead. Not yet. Anytime now, he hoped.
He went out the front. He thought he might even bump into Marigold as she ran away. That would be fun. They could die together.
Then the headlights from a vehicle almost blinded him.
What the hell?
Was it the police? Maybe they’d broken into his house and discovered mother and father in the cellar bonking and banging all day long. He didn’t envy them getting the bodies out. What a stink that would be, Drake. Quack, quack.
Yes, maybe it was the police. They’d found his parents and now they’d come to take him off in handcuffs. He wouldn’t like it in jail. No Mars Bars there. Better to get away, to die in peace and quiet without every damn person judging him and torturing him and banging all night long.
He looked to the side and saw the path leading down to the beach. Descend at your own peril.
He fled. He took the steps one at a time, but what he really wanted to do was sail down them. That would be a lark.
Then he stopped.
He saw father.
Oh god, father was in the cellar, there to get revenge.
His white wrinkled naked body was floating on the surf, back and forth, in and out, bang, bang, banging all night long. Drake felt his heart lurch at the thought of father locking him in the cellar again. He wouldn’t like that at all. “Get away from me,” he screamed, but his voice was carried away by the wind and the rain.
He slipped the rest of the way down the steps. It hurt his back a lot, just like when he was three and he slipped down the cellar steps. It was dry in those days. No water. But what he saw down there made him the man he was today. The walls were painted red and from them, red curtains hung like they’d been fashioned to cover a window where there was no window. Instead, there was an old couch. It was dirty and worn and attached to it were small lengths of rope as if the person sitting on the sofa would be tied up. Then from above, father had turned the lights off and laughed. Drake had scrambled to the top of the cellar stairs and banged on the door, but father didn’t let him out all day.
Now the cellar was flooded, and the water was splashing, like the sound of father’s body hitting the bottom of the steps when the mirror went down with him. Drake wished the splashing would stop. He didn’t like the splashing.
It was black everywhere. Dark. And cold. ‘Get away from me,’ he called as father’s corpse washed upon the sand with the white raging waves and the splashing....
He almost collided with the body as the water went past the steps, but to his left was a cave. He would hide in there until father had gone.
He went inside and hid, pressing his sore back against the rocks of the cellar.
He waited.
And then from behind him, he heard his mother laughing.
Chapter Fifty-two
“Roger,” Eva called as she ran along the eight.
She could see him through the bars, rocking the gates. Someone was trying to climb up. It was Jack, but the wet on the metal allowed him no grip and he slid back down. He went around the side of the minibus and climbed to the top. He stood there with the rain lashing down, not close enough to scale the gates.
The men were shouting. She couldn’t hear what they were saying. They could only see her and Jade, and now Kiki too, running towards them, running for their lives.
“Stand back,” one of them yelled.
The women stopped, drenched, huddling each other in the cold of the night.
The minibus reversed into the road and then it came toward the gates at speed.
Marigold’s husband, Wilbur, was at the wheel. The bus knocked out the hinges on the top left side, but it wasn’t enough. He reversed again, the gears scraping, and the tyres spinning and the engine roaring.
The minibus came right through and the men entered Seaview like they were the cavalry.
The residents of Seaview gathered inside the empty house, taking immediate shelter from the ghastly weather. The bus had been parked facing them so that the light shone in through the windows and illuminated their troubled, disturbed faces.
They exchanged stories, quickly, the women firing details at the men as they explained their plight against the crazy man who had killed the Butlers.
“Where’s Marigold?” Wilbur shouted to anyone who would listen. “Where’s my wife?”
“I’m here,” the voice said behind him as she entered through the back. The couple rushed into each other’s arms.
Marigold was relieved to see him. She had experienced independence and she’d enjoyed that, but now her husband was back and she felt safe and loved.
Roger faced Eva square on. Over his shoulder, Jack was consoling Jade as she trembled and cried in his arms.
“The house is ruined,” Eva sobbed as if it mattered.
He hugged her closer as his eyes moved around the room, taking it all in, scouring the place. He was pensive and alert, but Eva didn’t once wonder why.
“What made you come back?” she asked trying to drag her eyes away from Jack.
“We felt it was best since none of you were answering the phone,” he said. “We knew there was a severe weather warning and guessed you’d had a power cut, but we couldn’t be sure.”
“So, you decided to come back?” Eva had hope in her eyes, hope that her husband still loved her…and not Jade.
“Well, no, it was Jack, but I agreed straight away.”
Kiki was in the kitchen, attempting to revive Tyrone, while Rhianna’s Uncle Rolf, tended his wounds the best he could. Kiki was beside herself. Drake Fisher had been after her, but poor Ty had taken the brunt of the killer’s wrath. She wondered how he would mend, as she
knew he surely would.
“I think he’s going to be all right,” Rolf said as he bound one of his legs. “One leg is broken but the other is cut quite badly at the back of the knee. He’ll be fine, as long as we can get an ambulance out here. I think I’ll go now, drive to Taunton or the nearest phone box. They could be here within the hour.”
“Okay, thank you,” Kiki said.
“Keep him warm and hydrated.”
“I will.”
Tom sat exhausted against the wall, his head thrown back and his legs splayed on the floor in front of him. Rhianna held his hand. “Where’s Tammy?” he panted. “Where’s my sister?”
“I don’t know, Tom, but we’ll find her. Don’t worry.”
“Worried is my middle name.”
“I’d help you up, but we can’t find your wheelchair.”
“The guy tipped me out of it when he brought me in here,” Tom said. “Not before beating me up while my hands were tied. The bloody coward. At least when we fought in the kitchen, I was able to hold my own.”
“You were so brave.”
“Hey,” he said “When he kicked me in the legs, I didn’t feel a thing. I call that, one up on me.”
She chuckled as she straightened his shirt. “I’m sorry if you think I’m fussing over you.”
“Don’t be. I like it. As long as it’s you.”
Someone else crashed into the room. It was Constance.
She was out of breath and exhausted as she fell to her knees in the unfurnished sitting room. She thought about Glady, alone in Eva’s house, but there was nothing she could do for her now. She just wished she’d had longer with her, that brave wonderful woman.
Roger bent down and kneeled on the floor next to her. “Where’s your husband?” he yelled. “Where’s Eddie?”
Constance’s eyes closed. After she confessed, she would be called a murderer for all time.