Sudden Death

by Phil Kurthausen

  ‘Get to your feet, Erasmus,’ said Babak.

  Erasmus hesitated. Absurd as it was his nakedness made him hesitate. Babak nodded at Dave and the cord tightened. The panic and fear returned in an instant. Erasmus began to stand up. Immediately the grip around his neck loosened again.

  Dave stood back into the bathroom and kept the cord taut and pivoting on the showerhead.

  Babak stepped forward. In his left hand Erasmus could see the pair of clean, shining pliers.

  ‘He taught me some of his techniques, my father. And when the Americans needed to outsource some work in 2003, well, suddenly my techniques were in demand once again. This will hurt, Erasmus, but the pain will be good for you. It will stop a greater calamity befalling you in the future as the pain will remind you to not get involved when you have been told politely not to get involved. Yes.’

  Erasmus moved forward slightly but the cord bit immediately.

  ‘Don’t scream.’

  ‘I don’t think – ’

  But Erasmus didn’t finish his sentence. Babak moved as quick as a viper’s strike. He rushed forward and jammed the pliers and what felt like his whole hand into Erasmus’s open mouth. Erasmus felt the steel claws of the pliers search and lock on to one of his rear back teeth. He lurched forward again but the cord tightened and pulled him back. There was a crunch of breaking teeth and he could fill sharp, spikey fragments fill his already bruised throat.

  And then Babak stepped back and pulled his arm back swiftly.

  A brilliant, diamond hard pain exploded inside Erasmus’s head. He began to fall but the noose tightened and he forced himself to a standing position once again.

  He opened his eyes, which he must have shut at some point although he had no recollection of doing so.

  Babak held up the pliers and examined the bloody white tooth fragment lodged between the blades.

  ‘A molar, left fifteen if I’m not mistaken. Apologies I didn’t get all of it.’

  Erasmus could feel sweat pouring off him even though a moment before he had been shivering.

  Babak tutted. ‘Nearly done now, my friend. Remember this is for your own good.’

  Erasmus couldn’t help but he cower backwards as Babak stepped forward. This time he knew what was coming and he shut his mouth.

  Babak nodded at Dave and the noose was tightened again, digging hard into Erasmus’s airway. He would black out if he had to but he wasn’t letting Babak back in. He stared at Babak who looked pityingly back at him. The edges of his vision began to cloud and the burning in his lungs and his neck grew to an intensity that he didn’t think possible.

  Unconsciousness beckoned but before it came his lungs overrode his will and his mouth opened, allowing oxygen to pour in. The relief lasted a moment longer than the time it took for the neurons travelling along the nerve pathways to deliver the message that he wasn’t going to suffocate and then the pain hit him a millisecond after Babak’s hungry pliers locked onto the stump of what remained of his damaged tooth.

  This time he screamed.

  Babak placed his elbow into Erasmus chest and pulled with all his strength but the tooth wouldn’t come.

  Erasmus felt warm fluid soaking down his bare legs and he had a vague realisation that his bladder had failed him.

  The spitting tongues of pain seemed to reach down to his feet and through every part of his head. He felt vomit began to rise and he swallowed it down. If he did that now he knew he might drown in it.

  Babak stopped pulling and stepped back an inch but the pliers remained locked on the tooth.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ said Dave.

  Warm blood and viscera was poring from Erasmus’s gaping mouth.

  Babak sighed. ‘The root goes deep but if we remove it I think the problem will be gone, yes Erasmus?’

  Erasmus was dimly aware that he was nodding.

  Again with a speed that belied his age Babak moved forwards and then just as quickly backwards, putting his whole weight behind the effort. The tooth held for a few seconds and this time Erasmus knew that the approaching darkness wasn’t going to be put off. He felt the tooth pop out and then the pain enveloped his whole being for an agonising few seconds more before blackness fell like a theatre curtain.

  He awoke hours later to daylight streaming through the bathroom window and the sound of the telephone screaming at him from the living room.

  As soon as consciousness intruded so did the pain. It was raw and almost overpowering, sharp fingers of nerve-shredding pain that hammered into his jaw and brain like nails.

  He gasped with the sheer force of it.

  The phone stopped ringing.

  He looked down. His naked torso was covered in blood, mostly dry but still sticky in some places. Slowly, he stood up and then stepped out of the bath. He padded across the bathroom floor and looked at himself in the mirror. The face staring back at him looked like a butcher’s counter. The bits of skin that weren’t bruised blue were pale, his hair stuck to his head with blood, sweat and water, and his lips were swollen, red and ghastly. Worst of all was the left side of his jaw, which was bloated with bruising, giving him a lopsided look.

  He opened the bathroom cabinet and thanked Christ when he saw that there was an almost full packet of Ibuprofen in there. He popped open four and then another for good luck, and swallowed them. He bent down and turned on the cold-water tap and took in a swig of water. The pain from the water meeting the smashed nerves in his jaw made his knees wobble and he sagged forward grabbing hold of the sink to keep upright. He stayed in this position for a few moments taking in big gulps of air. The pain loosened its grip ever so slightly.

  The phone began to ring again.

  Erasmus grabbed his dressing gown, which still hung from the back of the bathroom door, and slipped it on. He shuffled through the living room area and picked up the phone from the side table. He didn’t lift the receiver though until he had sunk, exhausted, onto the couch.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Erasmus, you need to come right away. Something terrible has happened, is happening!’

  It was Karen and she sounded desperate, almost primal in her pleading.

  ‘OK, tell me.’

  ‘I think, no, I know someone has been murdered. Please come. I’ll explain when you get here. Will you do that?’

  She was crying.

  For a second his legs trembled and started to give way. He gripped the side of the coffee table and held on. He took a deep breath. He wouldn’t let her down by collapsing.

  ‘I’m on my way.’

  CHAPTER 39

  The way she hugged him was just like the old days. For a second there were no intervening years, there was just them, holding each other, feeling the pulse of their blood.

  And then she pushed him away. She looked at him, taking in the bloodied and swollen jaw. He had made a quick effort to clean himself up but Erasmus still resembled a cross between the Joker and the Elephant Man.

  ‘Jesus Christ, what happened to you?’

  ‘Filling,’ he replied and smiled, although from her wince he could tell it didn’t have the effect he had hoped.

  She busied him into the house.

  ‘I need to show you something.’

  Karen took him through to the computer in her study and sat down in front of it. There was another stool next to hers and Erasmus took it. He read the email.

  ‘I’m so sorry, were you close? And the Black Rose, I’ve heard of this before. Do you know what it means?’

  Karen sucked in her cheeks, she was holding back tears.

  ‘I used to be best friends with her mother when we were in school. We did everything together: first school dance, first kiss with a boy, we told each everything. And now,’ she started to choke up, ‘we share this.’

  Erasmus placed his hand on top of hers. She smiled weakly.

  ‘I don’t remember you mentioning her,’ said Erasmus.

  ‘She’d moved away by then. Her father was a doctor and he took up a
post in Australia. We drifted in and out of touch but, you know, life gets in the way sometimes.’

  Erasmus closed his eyes. Life gets in the way. He felt the years stretch out between them again. He opened his eyes. A tear ran down Karen’s cheek.

  ‘Her daughter cut herself, killed herself. My daughter is cutting herself and I think wants to kill herself. It’s not a coincidence.’

  Erasmus closed his mouth. He had been about to trot out the coincidence line.

  She bit her lip.

  ‘I know what you think and what the police think. You think it’s just a teenage thing. Inevitable hormonal casualties, but it’s not.’

  Erasmus placed his hand on her arm.

  ‘And the Black Rose?’

  Karen looked away and out of the window.

  ‘A gang, of sorts, it was just friends messing about. It was nothing.’

  She seemed reluctant to say any more.

  ‘Well, your friend mentions it. Was she part of the gang?’

  Karen looked at him. Tears were budding in the corner of her eyes.

  ‘When we were at school, things got passed around: rumours, school myths and half truths. The kid who was meant to have died in the swimming pool, the teacher who fiddled with the kids, and usually there was nothing to it then the over active imagination of the children. The Black Rose was like that. There were woods near the school and many, many years before the school was built there was a mill. We were always told to stay away from the woods by the teachers, there were still bits of old, rusted mill machinery down there and I think the school was terrified that we would injure ourselves and sue the school. But, of course, the more they told the kids not to go there the more we did. Even before my time there had been the Black Rose, kids who would hang out in the woods, smoke cigarettes, make out and tell each other stories. When I was growing up, hell, and this is no different to most of us, I just wanted to belong, so I hung around with the cool kids in the woods and we called ourselves the Black Rose, that’s it.’

  She looked away again.

  Erasmus knew Karen well but she had never told him about any school gang and it was hard to imagine her as one of the rebellious, troubled kids at school. She certainly hadn’t been like that when he met her a few years later.

  ‘Why would Ella mention it, do you think?’

  Karen sucked in air through her teeth.

  ‘The Mill had one wall still standing. On it was painted a large black rose. God knows who did it. I was once told that the Black Rose had been going for a hundred years, maybe a thousand years, who knew, and that’s what gave the name to the place. Have you heard about the suicide forest in Japan?’

  Erasmus shook his head.

  ‘There’s a forest, a very old forest, and for some reason, and no one really knows why, for years Japanese people, old and young, have been going into that forest to kill themselves. Every year – ’ she shut her eyes for a second ‘ – every year they have to send in teams of people to clear the bodies hanging from the trees. The Mill, the place of the Black Rose, was like that. In my time at the school, a girl called Alison Shaw hanged herself there. She was a troubled child, she used to – ’ she swallowed a sob ‘ – cut herself, and we knew about it, but Erasmus, we did nothing to help her. Maybe Ella remembered that? It was a big deal at the time, a pupil killing themselves.’

  She broke down crying and fell into his arms.

  He let her cry it out and then gently moved her back into her seat.

  ‘But why would this be relevant to your daughters now?’

  Karen shook her head.

  ‘I don’t know but it can’t be a coincidence that me and Ella were friends and now this has happened to our daughters.’

  ‘Rebecca hasn’t been in contact with Ethan, has she?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Not as far as we know.’

  She stood up and stared at him defiantly.

  ‘I don’t know but something is happening. Will you do something with me? Something that might sound idiotic and paranoid?’

  Something moved inside him, an old dragon reawakening from a long sleep. Whatever it was he would do it. They both knew it.

  ‘With a face like this how can I refuse?’

  ‘Will you come to Sheffield with me right now?’

  Erasmus looked directly at Karen. After she had dumped him, and when he had dragged himself out of his alcoholic fugue, he had spent months analysing how he had missed the iceberg in what had seemed an unsinkable romance. And when he had done this he had begun to recall moments that he never noticed at the time, when she had seemed distant, part of her brain engaged in other thoughts, of something being held back. He saw that on her face now. She wasn’t telling him everything.

  ‘What is it?’ said Karen.

  ‘Nothing. Sheffield, sure. Don’t they call it the Paris of the North?’

  Karen picked up her car keys.

  ‘I’ll drive and no they don’t. It’s a shit hole. Come on.’

  CHAPTER 40

  The red brick terrace house looked slightly different to the others in the street. Maybe it was the absence of replacement UPVC windows, the original sash frames remaining in place, or maybe it was the Greenpeace sticker in the corner of that window. What disturbed Erasmus was the letterbox, half open and unable to swallow the envelopes bearing tidings of low interest rates and other offers that had been rammed into it.

  During the journey over the Pennines Karen had explained that she, Ella, and Louise had formed a small, close group of friends at school. She hadn’t said clique but she hadn’t needed to. Karen had been form captain, Ella her deputy and Louise captain of the hockey team. At the same time in their school careers Erasmus had reflected that he was just beginning to discover the wonders of dope and Frank Zappa. How he had ended up getting together with Karen was as inexplicable to him as the workings of quantum mechanics.

  ‘So tell me again, what’s Louise’s story?’

  Karen shrugged.

  ‘I really lost touch with her. No Facebook, no nothing. Well, almost no contact for fifteen years apart from Christmas cards.’

  ‘Your two best friends and you hardly speak. What happened?’

  Karen looked away and didn’t answer.

  ‘Does she live her with any family? A daughter perhaps?’

  Karen looked apologetic.

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t think so. Her last Christmas card was from her and Milligan. Maybe a boyfriend?’

  ‘And you think what, that somebody has targeted you and Ella so Louise is next?’

  She looked away.

  ‘Well, come on. Let’s go and put your mind at rest. Though looking at the post box I think she may be on holiday.’

  Even as he said it he didn’t believe it. The house looked wrong, something out of place. As they walked across the deserted street towards the house Erasmus realised what it was. The curtains were open. If you were going away long enough for post to pile up like that would you really leave the curtains open?

  Karen hit the doorbell. There was no response. She tried again.

  ‘Shit.’

  Erasmus looked in through the front window. The living room was clean and tidy. Bare wooden floorboards, white walls with some modern prints and a white three-piece suite.

  ‘Look,’ said Erasmus.

  Karen came to the window and cupped her hands to the glass before peering in.

  ‘Do you see that? In the corner on the floor?’

  ‘No, I, eww. Yeah I do, a turd.’

  ‘A fresh turd. I think Milligan may be a dog and he is definitely about. I’m going round the back. I want you to stay here.’

  ‘No way. I’m coming with you.’

  Erasmus recognised the look. It was the Karen of fifteen years ago: tough, determined and focused on what she wanted. Which at the time hadn’t been him. He put the thought to one side.

  They walked to the end of the street and at the end terrace he turned right into the alley
way. At the back of the terraces the alley narrowed, becoming a tight brick channel lined with weeds and rubbish. As Erasmus started walking he noticed two small children at the far end with moon faces and dark eyes. They regarded him for a moment like he was an alien species and then when he began to move towards him they ran away, disappearing into the mouth of an adjacent alley.

  The alleyway stank of stale urine and decaying garbage. Erasmus guessed that the refuse collectors hadn’t been down here for many years, instead demanding residents pull their wheelie bins to the end where they could easily be loaded into the truck. The path itself was littered with hazards – he had already seen a couple of hypodermic needles – and the general filth and stink made him almost gag as he picked his way through the urban detritus.

  Karen giggled.

  ‘Smells like your flat,’ she said.

  ‘You’ve never been to my flat.’

  She grinned.

  ‘Not yet but I imagine you bachelors live in a state of physical and moral filth.’

  ‘I’m the exception and don’t call me a bachelor it makes me sound like an aging lothario.’

  ‘And that’s not an accurate description why?’

  An answer didn’t immediately present itself to Erasmus.

  ‘I think this is her yard.’

  He stopped next to a wooden door with peeling green paint. He tried the handle but it was locked.

  ‘Only one way – ’ He was interrupted by the sight of Karen jumping up and over the brick wall. ‘ – Over,’ he said to no one in particular.

  He grabbed the top of the wall and pulled himself up and over. The yard was small and empty save for a few terracotta pots filled with the wiry remains of plants.

  Karen was already at the back door and peering inside.

  ‘Something’s not right?’ she said.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Erasmus, joining her at the door.

  ‘The fridge is open. Why would the fridge be open if she wasn’t at home?’

  Erasmus looked in at the small kitchen. Opposite the back door was a fridge with its door hung open. Inside Erasmus could see the rotting remains of what may once have been a block of cheese, some jars that were now growing a muffin top of fungus and a Tetra Pak that had begun to fold in on itself like a melted dolls face.