Timelock

by R. G. Knighton

  Morgan recoiled from the sudden blinding light and shielded his eyes with the back of his hand a scene reminiscent of a vintage black and white vampire movie. Still unfinished with tormenting Tyler, Carl tried to snatch away the duvet and succeeded in getting it half way down the bed before Tyler managed to grab it back. This was enough though, it uncovered Tyler’s flabby midriff, embarrassing him in company. References to his weight made him uncomfortable in front of women and he blushed profusely at his exposure. His weight had been a constant battle all his life, spoilt by nannies with second helpings of pudding and plenty of aunties bringing chocolates and toffee from all over the world.

  “There she blows!”

  Said Carl, laughing as he pointed at Tyler’s white belly.

  Carl never missed an opportunity to embarrass Tyler, he did not realise how much he hurt his feelings, it stemmed from Carl’s jealousy of wealth and privilege, Tyler in return envied Carl, apart from the good looks and confidence with the opposite sex it was the freedom. Tyler Morgan 'the third' had none, his whole life mapped out for him before he was even born. Following the unwritten rules of aristocracy every move he made would be judged by his peers, approved or rejected according to some infernal social hierarchy. His life would never be his own, upon his birth his name was registered for the best public schools. When at home, only the highest calibre Norland nannies would care for his well being and upon his maturity, plans to take over the family empire when his father retired. All this while finding a family approved wife and producing his own son and heir Tyler Morgan IV the next link in the endless chain of nobility that can trace its lineage back to the Battle of Hastings. All this condemned him to life imprisonment, punishment for the crime, accident of birth. Tyler also had to attend the local university instead of grander seats of learning as his father was a ‘Huntingdon boy’, and they always looked after their own.

  Making a grab for his burgundy silk bathrobe that lay across the bed, Tyler put it on his top half then slid discretely from the bed avoiding any further exposure. When he straightened up, he pulled the belt tight around his waist to improve his physique. Trying to regain the higher ground Tyler began.

  “Perhaps you would like to introduce your guest Mr Barker.”

  He put on his best cut glass upper class accent knowing how much it irritated Carl, putting him on the back foot and giving Tyler time to regain his composure.

  “Err yeah,”

  He mumbled,

  “This is erm, err,”

  Carl stammered then stopped as he reached up and scratched the back of his head while fighting his brain for the woman’s name. The silence was only a few seconds but to Carl it lasted an age and he could feel her eyes burning into his back while he tried to recall what she said her name was when he picked her up last night in Einstein’s bar. Tyler, now wearing his glasses peered over Carl’s shoulder and focused on the young woman’s face, recognising her immediately, however watching Carl’s embarrassing act seemed far too enjoyable to let him off the hook too quickly.

  “I’m sorry Carl; I didn’t catch what you said. Did you say her name was err or umm?”

  Carl narrowed his eyes, staring daggers at Tyler’s face whilst clenching his fists. Tyler did not want to embarrass the woman any further so he decided to put Carl out of his misery.

  “Chelsea!”

  He exclaimed, Carl stood silent, acutely embarrassed as Tyler continued.

  “Chelsea Palmer, Conrad’s sister.”

  Carl dropped his shoulders in relief, grateful for Tyler taking Chelsea’s attention from him and he watched quietly as Tyler crossed the floor for a closer look.

  “I don’t believe it; I haven’t seen you in over five years.”

  “More like eight.”

  She corrected as Tyler continued.

  “Where’ve you been? The last time I heard of the Palmers was your fathers passing, read his obituary in the Times, please accept my sincerest condolences he was a great man.”

  Chelsea guiltily accepted Tyler’s sympathy, knowing full well that her father was very much alive and living abroad. The Palmer family had slipped well down the social scale after the Lloyds crash in the eighties and Oberon Palmer, Chelsea’s ‘late’ father was a Lloyd’s name. Overnight, the family lost all their money in the stock market crash. In an attempt to hide from their debts, Oberon concocted a plan to fake his own death, flee the country, and allow the family to claim on the insurance. The fraud took the form of Oberon piloting his light aircraft out over the Atlantic Ocean then disappearing off the radar after reporting engine failure. Oberon bailed out and parachuted down to a waiting fishing boat and the plane crashed into the sea, sinking swiftly to the bottom of a very deep trench making salvage almost impossible. The scam worked perfectly and Oberon set himself up with a new identity in South America. Within a year, giving time for any further investigation, the rest of the family packed their bags, ready to emigrate and join him. The problem was that Oberon had been cheating on his wife for years, and already had another family residing in Argentina. Oberon disappeared with everything the family owned, including the insurance money that he had persuaded his wife to transfer into his Swiss bank account, leaving his first family virtually penniless. Chelsea and her mother had to leave, selling the family estate and anything of value to settle all the debts. They both live together in a small semi-detached house on a local council estate, bought with Chelsea’s trust fund that was earmarked for her education. Chelsea’s mother refused to work on principle, and for years, they struggled by on state benefits. When she turned sixteen, Chelsea left school and got a job as a secretary for an estate agent friend of the family who took her on as a favour to her late father’s memory. On a rare night out, Chelsea met Carl and after going back to his houseboat and spending the night together, she finally found herself standing in yet another bedroom.

  Tyler looked Chelsea up and down.

  “Tell me, how on earth did you end up in the company of this reprobate?”

  He said, turning to point towards Carl only to find him missing with the click of the en-suite bathroom door telling him of his whereabouts. When he emerged, Carl found Chelsea sitting with her legs folded beneath her on top of Tyler’s bed listening to him talking on the in house telephone ordering breakfast for himself and two hot lunches for his guests. Before he Carl could intervene, Tyler replaced the telephone receiver, smiled at Chelsea, and then addressed Carl directly.

  “Took the trouble old man, meat and two veg, apple crumble to follow, hope you approve what!” Tyler smiled, hamming up his accent yet again, thoroughly loving how it got under Carl’s skin. Carl scowled, snapping back.

  “We’ve got work to do.”

  Tyler was ready and carried on;

  “Can’t work on an empty stomach old bean; tell you what, dear boy I’m going for a quick wash and brush up. While the food is prepared, you two can have a little chat. I’m sure you have plenty to talk about. Oh, before I leave, Carl this young lady is Chelsea, Chelsea Palmer; do you think you can remember that?”

  Carl glared in fury and looked around for something to throw at Tyler’s head, but before he could respond, Tyler had flounced across the floor and disappeared into the bathroom leaving him grinding his teeth. Seething at loosing the upper hand, Carl now he had to face Chelsea alone. Suddenly Tyler popped his head back into the room and said;

  “Bit nippy today could someone go down and close the outer door please, these old houses get very draughty and it whistles under the bathroom door something terrible and it's freezing in here, brass monkeys don’t you know!”

  Carl did not need asking twice, he knew Chelsea was angry with him; this seemed a good time to get out so he dashed from the room leaving her stunned and alone with her thoughts.

  Tyler locked the bathroom door, turned on the shower then gave his teeth a quick brush as he waited for the ancient plumbing system to heat the water to the required temperature. The room began to fill with steam as Tyler rem
oved his robe and he looked on with distaste at his flabby naked form in the mirrored wall tiles. Soon his image melted away as the lenses of his glasses misted over so he took them off, placed them carefully on the back of the sink, and gingerly stepped into the welcoming jets of warm water.

  Inside the shower cubicle, Tyler stood vigorously washing his hair as shampoo suds splattered around his feet, accumulated into drifts, and then slowly oozed down the gentle incline to collect en masse around the brass drain hole. As the water diluted the froth, it made a slurping noise, like a child sucking the last dregs of a milkshake as the suds disappeared down the plughole.

  Facing the shower-head in the corner of the cubicle Tyler was completely unaware of the grisly scene unfolding behind him. Rising through the white tiled floor appeared the figure of an overweight man dressed in green chest high fishing waders worn over a sweat stained white singlet leaving his hairy arms and hands uncovered. His head was completely hidden as he wore a faded latex rubber clown mask adorned with filthy tufts of nylon green hair sticking out above the ears. Through the mask’s peep-holes his bloodshot eyes stared down avidly at his grisly task.

  Standing behind a blood soaked butcher’s workbench, illuminated by a single overhead light bulb, he carefully inspected a fly ridden pile of still warm dissected human body parts before selecting the lower arm and hand of an adult female. Placing the limb carefully on the table before him, he reached over and grabbed the handle of a meat cleaver whose point was embedded into the wooden surface of the bench. Raising the heavy blade ready to strike and cleave the arm in two he paused, tilting his head in thought before changing his mind, and replaced the chopper back onto the counter top. Picking up the body part and holding it close to his severely myopic eyes, he slowly turned it over, closely studying the contours of the skin, completely oblivious to the blood dripping down his front from the freshly cleaved elbow joint. Placing the back of the woman’s hand next to his mouth that was barely visible through a thumb sized hole in the latex, he poked out his small pink tongue and slid it between the rigor mortis stricken fingers, licking the dead skin like a child with an iced-cream. When he grew bored of the taste, he caressed the dead woman’s fingers across the naked flesh of his forearm, chuckling under his breath and shivering with delight from another’s touch. Eventually this too grew tiresome so he vigorously turned the handle of a commercial kitchen sized meat grinder with one hand while feeding in the dissected part, fingers first with the other. It squealed softly from the hardness of the bone as the close meshed steel grinding wheels chewed the remains, feeding the soft pink mush through an exit nozzle to spatter onto the white tiled floor then very slowly ooze down a nearby drain.

  Reaching for another body part, the murderer dislodged a woman’s partly mutilated head from the top of the pile and it rolled off the table and onto the floor. The impact popped out the left eyeball of the severely fractured orbit, and as the head rolled away, the eyeball bounced once before disappearing down the drain.

  Unaware of the gruesome spectacle behind him, Tyler was already applying a liberal amount of foaming shower gel to his face and torso so he paid no attention when the drain suddenly stopped and began to back up into the floor pan. He did not even bother to investigate when the cubicle became calf deep in water, it was common for the stately homes old plumbing system to air lock, stopping the wastewater draining but it always fixed itself in the end, you just had to be patient. However this was different, what belched back up through the plughole was not what went down, this was spotted with red dots of blood followed by minced pieces of flesh and offal, rising to the surface and floating about in the creamy froth.

  Swearing loudly from the severe stinging when the shower gel ran into his eyes, Tyler clamped his eyelids tight to avoid any more getting in and adding to his pain. In his own personal darkness, the sponge he was using slipped from his fingers and fell into the bloody soup.

  “Dammed Victorian plumbing!”

  He cursed as he crouched down blindly fumbling through the sickening mess trying to find the sponge. Dark red blood now poured from the shower-head spraying the glass sides of the cubicle, which now resembled the inside of a blender filling with raspberry juice, with Tyler slopping about in the gruesome human chowder.

  Standing with sponge in hand which was now coated in strips if skin, hair and blood, Tyler blindly felt for the bottle of shower gel hanging on the wall and guessed at a liberal squirt he applied to the sponge before squashing it onto his face. The sickening concoction was now clinging to his skin as rubbed it all in under the crimson cascade. Every time he squeezed the sponge, more snotty red gobs oozed through its pores to the surface, staining his pasty white skin. Feeling very pleased with himself at embarrassing Carl, Tyler started to serenade his guests with excerpts from his favourite operas, all the time completely unaware of the disgusting variety of pieces of body parts sharing the cubicle with him. Inhaling deeply for the next verse, a congealed globule of body fat, slid into the corner of his mouth, which he closed and tried to swallow, gagging on the foul lump. Spitting and coughing he fished around his mouth with bloody fingers finally pulling out a strand of hair and leaving behind a trail of grey mucus across his tongue. Still oblivious to his plight he paddled surprisingly slender feet in the hot putrid broth, which slowly climbed the cubicle walls. Between his legs, the woman’s missing eyeball bobbed to the surface, staring vacantly up at his crotch, with the stringy optic nerve sticking to Tyler’s leg, holding the eye in position.

  Hearing the sound of his bedroom door slam and raised voices ensuing, Tyler realised that this was not to be missed so he hurried along vigorously rubbing the oleaginous pus filled sponge into every nook and cranny coating his body in a grey oily sheen. Eventually the offal soup began to recede and the blood shower transformed into clear water, washing away any vestige of blood, skin, or muscle. The tableaux of the human butcher sank silently down through the bathroom floor as Tyler turned his head into the shower jets and washed clean his eyes before shutting off the water, turning around, and opening the cubicle door to a completely clean bathroom.

  Carl was back; he had waited outside for ten minutes then finally returned mumbling under his breath about checking the oil in his car. He was hoping Tyler had finished his shower and would be back out in his bedroom talking to Chelsea. However, when he returned, she was still alone and her anger had not lifted. The sound of Tyler’s voice echoed from within the bathroom as he sang excerpts from the Mikado, supplying all the voices himself to ‘Three little maids’. Unfortunately, the tuneless entertainment had not soothed Chelsea’s mood.

  “You couldn’t even remember my name.”

  She hissed, turning to face Carl, jabbing an accusing finger in his face and stamping her foot in anger. Carl flinched and stepped back ready to avoid the slap that was sure to follow but she did nothing, just narrowing her gaze and staring him in the eye, waiting for an explanation. Carl paused, drew in a long breath ready to explain, but before he could say anything a blood curdling scream came from the bathroom. Upon hearing the yell Carl and Chelsea froze, both of them recalling their incident during the early hours of this morning. Carl was the first to react, running over to the bathroom door and finding it locked banged it hard with the side of his fist.

  “Tyler, are you alright?”

  In his panic, Carl reverted to Tyler’s Christian name instead of his surname, which he preferred to use. In the split second that Carl retried the handle, Tyler snapped back the door lock and Carl fell through the doorway onto the marble tiled floor, looking desperately around the bathroom expecting to find another hooded menace, but thankfully found nothing. The entire room looked spotless apart from the excessive condensation. Just as it happened to George earlier, everything had vanished but this time Tyler knew nothing of his slaughterhouse ablutions.

  Tyler smiled, rather amused at Carls antics.

  “I say old boy, what’s a matter?”

  He quipped, stepping back as Carl
could now see directly up the inside of his bathrobe.

  “The scream.”

  Carl gasped, picking himself up off the floor before speaking again. Tyler looked confused so Carl repeated his self.

  “You screamed Tyler, don’t you remember?”

  “Oh yes, sorry about that, slipped on the wet floor, a piece of soap stuck under my slipper, must have knocked it off when I put my specs on the back of the sink, see!”

  Tyler pointed to a shiny skid mark that ended with a sliver of soap on the floor tiles near the door.

  “Didn’t know you cared old bean, thanks for the concern.”

  Tyler quipped as he walked past a bemused Chelsea as she stood looking through the bathroom door; he then crossed the floor to answer the telephone that had just begun to ring.

  “Excellent! We’ll be right down.”

  He replied to the person on the other end before replacing the mouthpiece back onto the cradle.

  “Food’s ready!”

  He shouted to Tyler and Chelsea who were both in the bathroom whispering to each other, deciding whether to tell anyone about what happened this morning. Tyler dressed quickly in designer jeans and England Rugby shirt then shouted again. They finally emerged; agreement reached, and followed Tyler down stairs to the kitchens.

  Tyler turned to them in the corridor, attempting to break the silence.

  “I hope you’re hungry, Mrs Peckham’s a wonderful cook, and I’m starving.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  A chilling autumnal breeze whistled through the semi-naked branches of an impressive parade of mature Sycamore trees lining one side of the aptly named Sycamore Avenue along which George Harding now headed. The other side of the road bordered the Oxten canal, protected by an ornate cast iron post and rail fence painted black and topped with golden painted, nipple shaped post caps.

  Brittle russet coloured leaves, relieved of duty and dislodged by the sudden gust, swirled and fluttered earthwards, joining the thousands of others already carpeting the road and pavement below. George stopped and watched at the sight of what he thought was a small rodent scurrying for his burrow, then realised it was just another leaf skittering along the ground. As it reached the kerb, the wind flipped it up, end over end landing silently in the canal amongst the rest of the assorted jetsam. This dried, coracle leaf flotilla bobbed noiselessly up and down on the rippling water before rehydration forced a slow descent to the bottom adding to the rising level of debris and silt.