by Неизвестный
As I chop the vegetables, I see something out of the corner of my eye. I turn around, and for a fraction of a second, I swear I can see her – the woman in the picture. I again run out into the hall and look up, expecting to see the picture. Again, it is not there. I walk back to the kitchen and finish making the meal. I tell myself I just have the jitters, and then I set the table, waiting for JD to come home. I am in an old house on a stormy night. I know I am suffering from a condition probably known as too many Stephen King novels.
“Where is Emma?” JD asks, as he comes into the room. “In bed,” I answer.
“Ah, it’s going to be one of those evenings.” JD comes over, places his arms around my waist, and kisses my neck. As soon as he comes close to me, I know I will never be able to do what my mother did. I couldn’t; I’m not the person my mother was. I reaffirm that it is just the jitters. An hour or two later, my husband and I are sitting laughing, a glass of wine in our hands. We are enjoying each other’s company. The phone rings. JD tries to stop me from answering it, pulling me back down as I get up. I scold him and tell him that it might be a booking for next year. He sighs and lets me go. “Hello,” I say, answering the phone.
“It’s Aunt Maggie.”
“Hi, what is it...? You don’t sound too good.”
“I’ve remembered something from the night your father died. I don’t know why I didn’t remember it before.”
“What?” My aunt doesn’t answer straight away. She hesitates. “Tell me.” Now, I am frightened.
“A couple of days before your father died, I remember your mother took a disliking to that painting. I don’t know why I didn’t remember this before. It scared her. your father tore it down from the wall. took it outside and burned it.”
What she is saying to me is impossible, but yet I know it is the truth.
“Call an ambulance,” I tell her, dropping the phone to the floor. I slowly walk up the corridor. The wind and rain are beating against the windows outside. I don’t need to look to see if the painting is there. I know it will be. I turn the corner, and there she is, looking at me. Her smile is distorted and malicious. There is no mistaking her, and she looks right at me. She is alive. An icy chill runs through me as I watch her step out of the painting. Her steps are slow and spasmodic. However, every few steps, she moves faster than my eye can follow. Then she turns around and looks at me. She’s telling me with a glance what she is about to do. She is heading straight for him. I yell out. I run down the corridor – she repeats this little ritual, always remembering to turn around and snarl her intent at me. “JD!” I begin to yell, “Take Emma and get out of the house.” As I shout, the apparition turns around and slowly wags her finger at me, chastising me for trying to save my family. She now moves at an incredible, consistent speed. She unveils her other hand, which was hidden in the pleats of her skirt, to reveal a rusty knife. At this, I run past her, hoping I can lock her out. JD hasn’t heard my shouts. He’s half asleep on the floor, not realising the danger he is in.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, seeing my panic-stricken state.
“She’s coming for you.” I answer.
“What are you talking about?” An icy breeze sweeps through me. It is like nothing I have ever felt before. Tiny sharp pains stab my entire body, as if someone has plunged it into icy water. I turn and see her approaching my husband, wielding a knife. She has walked right through me. I yell again. “JD, get out of here!”
“What are you yelling about?” Who are you talking to?” JD asks, incredulous.
“Do you not see her?”
“See who?” I leap over toward her and grab the knife, trying to pull it back, but she is too strong. At that moment, the knife comes into JD’s vision.
“Regan, what are you doing?”
“I am trying to stop her.”
“Regan, you are not your mother; don’t do this!” he pleads.
“I am trying to stop her,” I repeat.
“No, just tell yourself over and over again that you are not your mother.”
“Can’t you see her?” I ask again.
“There is no one else here Regan, just us.” At this, the knife takes me with it and plunges down into JD’s stomach. It tears through his flesh again and again, plunging downward, taking me with it. It does this twenty times. Meanwhile, my daughter enters the room.
“Mummy, what are you doing?” she asks, her words echoing past events. “Don’t look sweetie, it’s all going to be all right.” But, I know it won’t. The ambulance arrives a few seconds later, but it is too late to save anyone in this house. I get into the police car and the officers pull my daughter away from me. The fierce storm rages on as they drive me away. I resolve that I will not kill myself, no matter what the temptation. I will never kill myself. I have to stay alive to ensure my daughter will never live in that house. I must stay alive. I reaffirm this intent, but providence has other ideas.
The next thing I know, I hear a loud bang, and the car I am in turns over on its side. I feel myself drifting away from my body. I see myself. my eyes look stark and lifeless. I know I am dead. I see a light in the distance and blackness engulfs me, but I stay exactly where I am. I can still feel my daughter. I won’t leave her.
***
Ten years have passed and here I am, repeating my story in my daughter’s ear, hoping one day that she will hear me. Sometimes I think she does. She turns around quickly, as if she has gotten a fright, and looks me straight in the eye. But within a few seconds, she dismisses her instincts, and I am blocked out again. But, I will stay with her until she does hear me. She has to know never to live in that house. She has to hear me....
Night Train
by Luke Fisher
It had been a close call. Lyle had used more effort than he thought he had in him to reach the train and as the doors closed behind him. He had been racked with pain, his lungs burned and his temple throbbed.
Lyle had been in his seat now for half an hour and with a whisky down him and a steaming coffee in front of him; he had begun to relax, nodding his head occasionally as he tripped in an out of sleep.
The train was busy but not full. Business people tapped on laptop keyboards, students laughed and drank, children read and coloured: people using up time, waiting for a destination.
The job had been easy. Lyle had a routine. Surprise, subdue, extract information or exact revenge, then finish things.
He caught the guy unawares as he came out of his bathroom, just dressed and ready for a night out, hair still damp from the shower, relaxed and unguarded. A trademark blow to the neck brought him down. Lyle handcuffed and gagged him, then bound him into a kitchen chair and waited for him to come around. He stared at the man’s confused then frightened face, explained to him why he was there, who had sent him. He showed him the large pair of pliers he had brought then removed the man’s right index finger with a single clip. As his victim struggled, fought against his restraints, tried to scream through the gag, Lyle slipped a length of piano wire around his neck, tightened it and fastened it hard with a practiced twist. As he waited for the man’s life to finish, Lyle lit a cigarette, picked up the severed finger and placed it carefully into a sandwich bag. This was his timecard, his proof of a job well done. Job number thirty complete and that was it. Self promise about to be realised, thirty kills and out: a change of scene; a different life; an anonymous 47-year-old man in a Suffolk seaside town.
Stephen Lyle had not always been a killer. He had not come from a violent background. A middle class boy, well schooled, a good university, but adult Stephen was a bad choice-maker. He had begun his working life in banking, sorting out the finances of the wealthy, advising on investments, pensions, tax. His clients were not all legitimate but he didn’t shy away. Lyle soon realised that he had a taste for danger and an elastic morality. He was dazzled by the gangland culture, the fraternity, the easy money, the women and the drinking. He had not allowed himself to drift into crime, he had sought it, put himself forward for it. First
some small stuff, money laundering, using the bank as a front for sharp practice then more direct activity, collecting money, threatening late payers and that led to aggression and soon violence became his drug of choice.
His first kill had been a huge rush. He had been alone with a nasty little drug dealer in his stinking Deptford squat. The dealer owed twenty thousand and was twisting, whining, trying to buy more time. Lyle had hit him a few times but he still droned on and it was clear there was no money. The wire had been an accident, a piece of chance left on a table in the dingy squat. He had picked it up in his leather gloved hands while the man squirmed on the floor. At first Lyle just wanted to frighten him, he had whipped it around the scrawny neck and pulled it just tight enough to make the guy splutter, but once he had him in his control an immense feeling of power and serenity overwhelmed him. He kept tightening the cord, kept it tight while the man struggled and thrashed beneath him. When the man was dead he let go and the body slumped to the floor, the wire was almost embedded in his victim’s neck and Lyle had taken satisfaction from that, seen it as a warning sign to others. There had been no police, his new friends had seen to that, and his kill gained him status and respect. The rest was history: he liked killing, criminals want people killed and he began a career as hired hitman. It had made him rich, feared and a target.
Now it was time to change. The thrill of killing had diminished and each new job brought another worry, fed his growing paranoia that he Stephen Lyle was the next victim. So he had decided to stop. He had enough cash and through an elaborate process that kept his name off the deeds he had bought a house in a respectable Suffolk town. A gentile and mild mannered place, close to the sea, and a million miles from his current life.
Lyle yawned. He was sticky, the sweat had dried on his forehead and his hands felt unclean. He looked to the sign at the end of the carriage; the bathroom was occupied. Checking first that his bag was safely stowed, he got out of his seat and walked back down the train, past the travelling public and through the cheerless buffet car until he found a vacant sign.
At the washroom door he paused slightly, allowing himself to rock with the sudden jolting motion of the train, his hand anchored on the door handle for a moment before he twisted it open then instantly recoiled, gasping, breathless with shock.
The dead eyes stared out at him from their puffy sockets, accusing, spiteful. Lyle stumbled back, steadying himself on the door’s metal frame.
The body was propped up on the ugly steel toilet. The face was grotesque, purple and bloated as though inflated with foul air. Around the neck a biting ligature of thin wire formed a cruel halo above the semi-clothed torso. Lyle swallowed hard; incredulous he reached forward and almost touched the corpse. His gaze was drawn to the body’s right hand, to the stump, black with congealed blood, which marked the position where a finger had once grown. There could be no doubt: this was the man who a few hours ago had slumped in front of him, whose life Lyle had squeezed away with a twisted wire. The dead man’s shirt had been ripped open revealing a patchwork of tattoos. Pictures of dragon-like reptiles merged with twisting female forms, and in their centre, cut deep into the chest, was a crude pentangle, its lines blurred by darkening blood.
Lyle turned and started to run, back though the carriages past half-empty cans and foam-stained plastic glasses, past newspapers vying with cheerful children’s books for space on the narrow tables. He charged though the now desolate buffet car and on past suddenly vacant rows of chairs. Lyle was panicking now, he could feel his chest tighten with fear, logic failed him, where had all the people gone? They couldn’t have disappeared, it was impossible. Who had placed the body? How had they got hold of it?
He stopped running as he reached his seat, his chest heaving as he sucked air into his lungs, his need for oxygen fuelled by the massive surge of adrenalin in his blood. He tried to collect himself, to stem his rising fear. Concentrate, he thought, who has done this? Worry about how later.
Lyle began to calm. His instinct for survival was winning and he was back in control. He surveyed his surroundings: tables as before but no passengers. His coffee had stopped steaming, his bag was unmoved and he noticed that opposite an abandoned laptop’s screen-saver now traced a pattern of complex pipes. He listened. The train sounded faster than before but strangely its movement had become less marked. The familiar rocking of a train at speed was all but gone, as though the train were floating above the rails.
Kneeling on a seat Lyle pressed his face to the window and cupped his eyes, blanking out the fluorescent glare of the carriage lights. It took a few seconds for his eyes to become attuned to the dark but, even when he was sure they must be, he saw nothing. Through the window he stared into an abyss. There was no night sky, no hint of a tunnel wall or even of the train’s own lights radiating into the void, just total blackness.
Lyle stood again and looked up and down the carriage, his body now on full alert. His mind began to churn, who could have done this? He had many enemies but this was an extravagant job to pull, surely too elaborate for the thugs that he kept an eye open for. Then suddenly a flicker! He sensed rather than saw it, but something had moved in the next carriage.
Lyle tore his bag from the overhead shelf, fished inside and withdrew a slim-bladed knife. Dropping the bag on his seat he checked the weapon, pulling it halfway from its leather scabbard as though reassuring himself of its lethality. Lyle slipped the knife into his trousers so that the handle lay flat against the small of his back and looked towards the door to the next carriage.
Now that he was alert again his confidence had recovered. His reason was returning. The dead man must have powerful friends, and these contacts would be violent and resourceful people and they had set him up. Lyle could deal with violent people: they were his living.
The door to the next carriage hissed open as Lyle’s foot pressed on the rubber mat. Cautiously he moved into the space between the cars and checked the now vacant toilets, nothing. He looked though the next glass door at the rows of seats ahead of him. To his right, about halfway down the carriage, he was surprised to see the top of a head facing away from him. Someone was sitting in the compartment.
As he entered the carriage Lyle made no attempt to conceal his presence. It had long been his style to intimidate, to attack. He strode up the aisle keeping his eyes fixed on the back of the head. Once he was in striking distance he slowed and removed the knife from its hiding place. The blade blinked in the bright overhead light and Lyle positioned it ahead of him, readying himself for conflict.
The head turned.
The man who met Lyle’s gaze was extraordinary. His face, framed in oil-black hair, was shocking. The skin appeared as if made of wax or plastic – dead skin. The lips were white and thin, the eyebrows devoid of hair. Lyle’s mouth opened slightly. The man’s eyes connected with his. The eyes were black, each pupil and iris merged into a single dark hole – shark’s eyes. Lyle’s arm involuntarily relaxed and he brought the knife down to hang beside him, it clattered to the floor.
The creature spoke.
“Alea iacta est, Mr Lyle! The die is cast’”
Lyle was stunned. The man’s appearance was terrifying, his eyes mesmerising. He tried to speak but his mouth was dry and his throat silent. He looked down from the stranger’s face. The clothes were odd, dark, from another age. His hands were spread out on the table in front of him, the fingers claw-like, the nails horny and long. But it was the photographs laid out like cards in front of the hands that caused Lyle’s legs to buckle. Thirty pictures for thirty lives, each as Lyle remembered them, recently dead by his own hand. Some missed a finger or a hand, some were complete, and all were strangled, the evidence still visible, biting into the blackened necks.
The stranger paused fixing Lyle with the macabre dark eyes.
“Running for a train in such an abused body was unwise: a fatal error in fact.” The voice was accented, foreign, somehow ancient.
Lyle stumbled back and began to f
lee, a raw visceral terror overwhelming him, but as he reached the door there was nothing behind it. The now familiar, cloying blackness had replaced the next carriage. He put his hands up to his eyes and half sobbed, half bellowed a cry of anguish and defeat.
He turned back to face the carriage, it was now almost full. In each seat sat a man and all fixed their dead eyes on Lyle, each a victim from the photographs, reanimated and quite real.
The stranger stood in the centre of the aisle and smiled as thirty lengths of glinting wire were raised slowly into the air and one by one the passengers rose to their feet and moved in orderly procession slowly but deliberately towards Stephen Lyle.
Immobile with terror Lyle could do nothing; his usually powerful arms limp as though paralysed. Even as the first metal cord tightened about his neck he could not move, could not fend off his attacker. He could smell the fetid cold breath, hear the broken rasp in the dead man’s throat and feel the icy damp hands as they brushed his skin and tightened the noose. The pain was excruciating. He fought for breath, his lungs burnt, his veins strained against his skin, he waited for the darkness, for the end but it did not come. Death did not come even when the second then third wires tightened, just more pain, a wall of agony, all consuming, firing into every nerve in his body as each individual cell pleaded and grasped for oxygen.
“There is no end to this pain for you, Mr Lyle.” The creature whispered, suddenly next to him, the waxy skin almost touching Stephen’s cheek.
The demon looked ruminatively back down the queue, observing each corpse patiently waiting his turn.
“Peace is for the pious.” He breathed the words, they sounded almost like regret, a lament for what might have been.
The forth corpse lurched forward and began to slip the wire over Lyle’s head, the cord catching on his ears, the pungent breath invading his nose. The pain redoubled, a different pain, a catastrophic explosion in his chest, sharp and stabbing, hot needles pushing out though his arms, he blinked and suddenly he was on his back. He could feel cold concrete beneath him, hear concerned voices and as his vision swam he saw yellow clothes, police, bright lights and someone was kneeling over him a metal paddle in each hand. Lyle drew in a huge breath of air, retching and coughing as life flooded back into his body. He was on a platform, paramedics above him. He was not dead!