by Shaun Hutson
REDIAL.
As he waited for the phone to be picked up he wedged the receiver between his ear and shoulder and checked he’d got the right number.
He had.
There was no mistake.
SHELBY HOUSE was written on the Post-it note in Ronni’s unmistakable hand and, beside it, the number.
It continued to ring.
The number was stuck beside the phone with another list of numbers.
Her father’s home.
Not much need for that one at the moment.
The local surgery.
Alison Dean’s number.
Gordon Faulkner’s too.
And a number of others ranging from an emergency dentist to the local plumber.
The phone was still ringing.
“Come on,” Andy murmured irritably.
“Hello?” said a voice finally.
He didn’t recognize it.
“Is that Shelby House?” he said, glancing at the number again.
“Yes.”
“I’d like to speak to Ron Veronica Porter, please.”
“Who is this?”
“I’m her husband.”
There was a moment’s silence at the other end, then he heard a voice he knew.
“Hello, Andy.”
“Ronni, are you all right?” he said.
“Why shouldn’t I be?”
“You haven’t rung for two nights.”
“You know where I am.”
He was puzzled by the acidity of her tone.
“Is everything all right?” he wanted to know.
“What do you mean?”
“Has there been any more bother there? You know, with ‘ “I said everything’s all right.”
Again that sharpness.
There was an awkward silence, finally broken by Andy.
“How’s your dad?”
“There’s no change.”
“Have you been to see him?”
“I rang the hospital.”
“I was thinking of going to see him.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know I don’t have to,” he snapped.
“Look, Andy, do you want something? I’m busy.”
“I was checking you were all right,” he hissed, irritated by her manner.
“I don’t know why I fucking bothered. When are you coming home?”
“I don’t know. When all this is over.”
“Ronni ‘ “Don’t ring here again, Andy. It disturbs the residents.”
She hung up.
Ronni kept her hand on the receiver for a moment, then turned slowly in her chair.
Colin Glazer, Donald Tanner and Harry Holland stood gazing intently at her.
“Well done, Ronni,” Glazer said.
“And now what?” she said challengingly.
“Are you going to take me back to my room and lock me in?”
“If you co-operate there’ll be no need for that,” Holland told her.
She regarded each of them in turn.
“Could you come to the day room with us, please?” said Tanner.
“We’ve been discussing this matter and we’ve reached a decision.”
THE DAY ROOM was unusually silent, Ronni thought as she seated herself. The television was nothing more than a blank eye in one corner; she could see herself reflected in its polished glass.
The residents watched her with the kind of detached indifference a cat reserves for a cornered mouse.
How appropriate.
“I understand you’ve been discussing things,” she said finally.
Eight pairs of eyes looked on coldly.
“What kind of things?” Ronni persisted.
“How to dispose of the bodies? What to do with me?”
She looked at the eight residents before her and thoughts tumbled through her mind.
If she made a run for it now, she’d reach the main doors. That wasn’t a problem.
But they had the key.
She glanced at the windows.
She could reach them easily, break them too, but they were still secured by the makeshift bars erected days earlier.
And even if she got out ... what then? Find the nearest phone? Call the police?
Ronni sucked in a weary breath.
“We think you’re right,” Jack Fuller began.
“Those kids have been here long enough.”
Ronni almost managed a smile.
“Are you going to let them go?”
“You know what will happen if we do, Ronni. That’s something else we’ve discussed.”
“So what’s the point of this meeting, then?” She gestured around her at the residents.
“We’ve decided to carry out their punishments tonight,” Fuller said flatly.
“Then they’ll be released.”
Ronni frowned.
“What kind of punishments?” she asked warily.
“Ones to fit their crimes,” George Errington told her, looking over the top of his glasses.
“What are you planning to do to them?”
“If you don’t want to be a part of it, you don’t have to,” Fuller said.
“It might be best if you weren’t.”
“As soon as you let them go they’ll bring the police back here. Or worse,” she protested.
“No they won’t,” Harry Holland told her.
“How can you be so sure?”
“They won’t be back, Ronni,” Fuller told her.
“Not after tonight.”
“Punishments to fit their crimes, Veronica,” Barbara Eustace echoed.
“And who’s going to do it?” Ronni demanded.
“Whatever it is you’re planning. Who’s going to carry out this ... punishment you’ve decided on? You, Harry? You, Eva?”
“All of us,” Fuller informed her.
“They wronged us all. We’ll all make them pay.”
She ran a hand through her hair.
“You’re no better than a lynch-mob,” she murmured, shaking her head.
“You can’t take the law into your own hands like this.”
“By the end of the night it’ll be over,” Fuller assured her.
“We can go back to living our lives.”
“With three deaths on your conscience?”
“No one said anything about killing them, Ronni. Though, God knows, they deserve it.”
Tell me what you’re going to do,” she demanded.
Silence.
COMPULSION
Tell me.”
Motes of dust turned lazily in the shafts of watery sunlight poking into the day room. Nothing else moved.
Do SOMETHING.
But what?
Think.
There must be something you can do.
Ronni paced the locked room again and gazed in the direction of the window.
Think.
She slid the sash open and peered out.
How far to the ground? Fifteen feet? Twenty? Far enough to break both legs if you land badly.
There wasn’t even anything beneath the window to break her fall. No bushes. No handy tree she could scramble into the branches of and shin down.
No, that only worked in films, didn’t it?
No passing man walking his dog to shout at.
That was one from the movies too. Or the old one about throwing the crumpled note from the window and a passer-by finding it.
It didn’t work in real life.
Ronni looked up at the guttering that overhung the window.
Don’t even think about it.
Even if it would support her meagre weight (which she doubted) and supposing she managed to haul herself up onto the roof... What then?
Sit there like some prisoner on protest, lobbing slates off until someone came?
But no one would come, would they?
Shelby House, set within its own grounds, was invisible from the road. No one was going to pass by. No one was going to se
e some crazy woman up on the roof signalling for help.
On the far side of the room, the telephone cable had been cut clean through with a Stanley knife.
No way of reconnecting that.
Even if someone did come, what was she going to tell them?
There are three missing kids in the basement who are all due to be punished tonight by the residents. These frail, harmless old people who live here? That’s right.
They’ve kept the kids prisoner for three days. Starved them, beaten them, threatened them with a gun and tonight they’re going to do something awful to them. No, I don’t know what it is, but I’m sure it’s bad.
Why are they doing it? Oh, the kids had been terror ising them for over a week and the police can’t do anything about it. One of the residents had her dog butchered by them and another died of shock when she found the dead animal.
What? Yes, they’re the same kids who beat my father so badly he’s in a coma. Look, I’ve got the wedding ring they stole from him. See?
Can you help me get them out?
Why do I want to help them? Well, I’m not really sure .. .
Ronni stopped pacing and sat on the edge of the bed.
The sultry afternoon had given way to an overcast evening. She saw the banks of dark cloud gathering like premonitory warnings.
She hadn’t struggled when Harry Holland and Helen Kennedy had escorted her upstairs to her room and locked her in.
What was she supposed to do? Knock them out and make a run for it?
She had even accepted the cup of tea that Helen had made for her.
Quite civilized, really. Most people who kept you prisoner, so she’d read, usually cut your ears off or beat you.
Ronni might have laughed if the situation hadn’t been so ludicrous.
For one fleeting second, she wondered what the residents were going to do to the three captives.
What kind of punishment was fitting?
Again she looked out of the window, gazing out across the grounds.
She glanced at her watch: 6.35 p.m.
An hour earlier, Eva Cole had tapped lightly on the door and asked if Ronni had wanted anything to eat.
She hadn’t.
Another hour passed before she heard movement outside the door again.
Night had flooded the sky.
She crossed to the door and listened to the sounds of many feet in the corridor.
She heard a key being turned in the lock of the room opposite.
She thought she heard soft whimpering.
Then the door opposite slammed shut.
It opened briefly about ten minutes later and she heard more footsteps.
Slow and deliberate. They disappeared down the stairs, then returned a moment or two later.
Ronni turned the handle of her room as if expecting that the door would have magically unlocked itself.
Needless to say, it hadn’t.
She pressed her ear to the wood and listened.
“Ronni.”
The voice startled her, but she didn’t answer.
Perhaps whoever was outside would come in. You could overpower them and get out.
“Ronni.”
She recognized the voice of Jack Fuller.
She didn’t answer but instead tried to control her breathing. He didn’t twist the handle. The key didn’t turn in the lock.
Ronni heard the door of the room opposite open, then slam shut once more.
Within ten minutes, she heard the first scream.
DONNA FREEMAN DIDN’T know their names.
She didn’t really care.
All that mattered to her was getting out.
She thought that if she co-operated then they might treat her better. That was why she hadn’t struggled when two of the old men had come down into the basement and untied her.
They had left the tape around her mouth, but at last they had released her from the ropes that had cut so deeply into her ankles and wrists for so long.
When she’d first stood up, she’d needed their arms to support her. Her body felt numb from the waist downwards. The joints of her knees, ankles and hips held in virtually the same position for three days felt as if they’d locked. Donna pressed her bare feet down hard on the stone floor as if trying to restore the circulation.
After a moment or two, she felt able to walk on her own and allowed herself to be guided towards the stairs.
She glanced behind her at the still-bound forms of Carl Thompson and Graham Brown.
Donna was halfway up the stairs when a thought struck her.
Why had they untied her?
She wanted to ask. She grunted into the tape, but Colin Glazer merely coaxed her gently up the remaining steps, then slapped off the lights behind him, plunging the basement back into darkness.
Donna was shivering; a combination of hunger, cold and fear.
The lights in the corridor made her wince.
Her soiled knickers stuck to her buttocks as she walked.
Another set of steps.
Up to the first floor of the building.
And now she saw the other old people emerging from another room to her right.
They followed her and the two old men with her like some kind of procession.
What the fuck was going on?
If only they’d take off the tape. She could tell them how sorry she was. How it was the other two, down in the basement, who’d been responsible.
She slowed her pace slightly, but Donald Tanner pulled at her arm and forced her onwards.
They reached the landing and Colin Glazer moved ahead to unlock a door.
The other old people followed, their eyes fixed on her.
Donna was shuddering more violently now, despite the fact that there was a radiator on her left. She could feel the heat, but it did little to stop the quivering.
Glazer stood back and ushered the little procession into the room.
Donna allowed herself to be pushed gently across the threshold.
The room was in darkness but for two bedside lights burning on cabinets on either side of the single bed.
The bed itself had been stripped down to the bare mattress.
More and more of the old people crowded into the room, pushing her towards the bed.
The straps were hanging down at the sides, top and bottom.
Thick, leather straps that would be fastened with heavy buckles.
Donna hesitated.
Was she merely going from one place of captivity to another?
She looked at each face in turn and saw only indifference.
Jack Fuller pointed towards the bed.
SHAUN HUT SON
Donna knelt on it, then lay down on her back.
The straps were fastened quickly and expertly.
One tightly across her chest, forcing the breath from her.
Another across her stomach.
Helen Kennedy wound one around her left wrist and pulled, so that
Donna’s arm was stretched towards the bed head
Eva Cole imitated the action with her right.
Harry Holland gripped her right ankle while Colin Glazer took her left. They fastened the two straps, pulling hard so that her legs were apart.
Donna’s heart was thudding against her ribs. Her eyes moved frantically back and forth.
As she looked to her left, she caught sight of a low table beside the bed that she’d not seen until now.
It was little more than a coffee table.
Donna’s eyes bulged in the sockets and she began to buck madly against the straps. She tried to scream and felt tears welling up in her eyes once more, trickling hotly down her cheeks.
For long moments, she twisted against the straps, then finally flopped uselessly back onto the bare mattress, sweat beading on her forehead and top lip.
Helen Kennedy took a step forward.
Donna shook her head imploringly.
She continued to stare at what lay on the table.
/> RONNI COULD CONTAIN herself no longer.
She gripped the door handle and twisted it hard.
Nothing happened.
“Open the door,” she called.
No one came.
She banged hard on the wood with the flat of her hand, slamming it repeatedly until her palm throbbed.
They must be able to hear her they were only across the corridor.
They can hear you. They’re ignoring you. They’ve got other things on their minds.
Ronni kicked the bottom of the door angrily, leaving a scuff mark on the paint.
What the hell were they doing in that room?
She tried to swallow, but her throat was dry.
She could hear the blood pounding in her ears, her heart thumping against her ribs.
Again she hammered on the door, using both fists this time.
It was useless.
Ronni took a couple of steps back and looked around the room for something heavy.
Perhaps if she could smash the lock ... She could see nothing weighty enough.
A chair?
No good.
She needed something she could grip. Something she could use to batter away at the lock until it splintered and buckled.
There was nothing.
She stepped towards the partition once again and began hammering frantically on the wood with her fists.
They would have to come eventually.
Eva Cole paused for a moment when she heard the thudding of flesh against wood. She looked in the direction of the noise, then at Jack Fuller, who merely nodded. Helen understood.
She crossed to the small, low table and regarded the objects that lay upon it.
A large pair of scissors.
Several needles.
Some black thread.
(which she herself had provided) Two Stanley knives.
One claw hammer
A bolt-cutter.
Three pairs of pliers and an assortment of screwdrivers and chisels.
(courtesy of Jack Fuller’s toolbox) Some secateurs.
(from George Errington) Two fishing hooks.
(brought in by Donald Tanner) A bottle of iodine, some gauze and bandages.
(taken from the pharmacy by Harry Holland) Three small hand towels neatly folded.
Donna was weeping quietly, the sound muffled by the tape across her mouth.
The residents moved closer.
Ronni stood against the door, her fists red. Her arms ached and her head was beginning to throb.
Why hadn’t they come? Even if it was only to shut her up.
She raised one hand and struck weakly at the door. Then she backed off and sat on the edge of the bed, staring at the handle as if that would cause it to turn.