by Rick Wood
“Your mum?”
“She has months left to live, and the only chance we had was to put her in a drug trial that costs thirteen thousand pound, and we don’t have anywhere near that much.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, and that’s why we are here, I swear, that’s why.”
The man nodded, his face twisting to a thoughtful contortion, as if this was interesting news, and he could do something with it.
From the man’s reaction, Gray wasn’t sure whether revealing this was a great idea or not. He was hoping for sympathy, but he was beginning to learn that this man had little of it.
“Are you just doing this because we broke in?”
The man sighed.
He opened a cupboard and withdrew an apron. It was white, stained in ketchup, with let me feed you strawberries written on it in Comic Sans.
“Wh– what are you doing?”
“I’m putting an apron on, Gray,” the man said, placing the apron over his head.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to get any mess on my suit.”
The man finished tying the apron behind his back. He stood over Gray, sighing, his hands on his hips, going from decision to decision.
“So,” the man declared. “How should I do it, Gray?”
“What? Do what?”
“I like to do it slow, but I tell you what, seeing as there’s a girl upstairs, I think I’d rather do it slow with her.”
“What? Do what slow?”
“Amber would be, of course, far more to my taste. I don’t find killing men as satisfying.” He clapped his hands together to signal a decisive moment. “That’s it! I have decided.”
“What? Decided what?”
“I am going to do it quick, Gray. Nice and clean and quick.” He crouched down, grinning a grin that sent a waterfall of dread pouring down his skin. “That way, I will have more time for your sister.”
29
Once Amber’s thoughts had morphed from nonsensical leaps of panics to thoughts that could bear some coherence, she grew quickly aware that Gray was still downstairs on his own.
And that he hadn’t chimed the grandfather clock.
Which either meant that he hadn’t noticed the car outside, or he had been unable to chime it.
Maybe he’d run away. Maybe he’d left them there. Maybe he was halfway down the drive right at that very moment.
Or maybe he’d been discovered, and…
And what?
Luke emerged from the room where she’d found the morbidly decorated corpses with his face just as pale as hers.
He paused for a moment, leaning against the wall.
She could almost see his thoughts jumping from drastic decision to drastic decision. He’d been quicker to adjust to the sight than she had, and she was sure that he was now trying to decide what their next move was.
“We… we have to get out of here,” he mumbled. “We need to get out of here quickly.”
“Luke–”
“The windows aren’t an option. Some kind of shutters… I… I don’t know how…”
She tried to decipher the code.
Windows? Shutters?
“What are you talking about?” she asked, finding herself speaking louder than she intended.
In an unexpected spurt of energy Luke grabbed her hand, pulled her from the floor, and dragged her through the corridor until they reached a window.
His hand raised to indicate the shutters that had them trapped in.
She ran from that window to the next, around the corner to the smashed window where she could press her open palms against the shutters, feeling their resilience to her meek force.
“How – how is he doing this?” she asked.
“I have no idea.”
“What do we do?” She turned to look, hopping from one foot to the other, her fingers interlocking and wrapping around each other like a tub of frantic snakes.
“We have to hope it’s not on every floor.”
They checked the next floor down. Rushing to every window and finding just what they expected to find.
Amber stopped in the corner of a corridor and she collapsed, curling into a ball, huddling her arms around her knees, rocking back and forth and shaking her head, refusing, refusing to think.
What about Mum?
How would Mum get the treatment if they never got out?
Luke didn’t force her to stand up, didn’t pull her away or tell her to get a grip. Instead, he sat next to her, tucked his arms around her and held her in a silent embrace for the next few minutes.
“It’s okay,” Luke eventually said. “We’ll get out, it’s okay.”
“What about Mum?”
“We’ll… we’ll find a way. Let’s just get out, then we’ll find a way.”
“Luke, what about – what about Gray?”
The look on Luke’s face provided the evidence Amber needed to confirm Luke hadn’t been thinking about Gray.
“I think we may just have to concentrate on us,” Luke decided. “For now.”
“I’m not leaving him.”
“Amber, you saw the bodies. Didn’t you?”
She pushed her lips together as she held back tears. She nodded.
“I don’t want to leave him. Honestly. But he’s on the bottom floor – chances are, if he could get out, he already would have.”
“And if he couldn’t have?”
Luke didn’t answer.
He stood.
“We can’t just wait around here,” he said. “We need to find a way out.”
Amber looked around. The corridor was soaked with darkness, no late evening light seeping in through any window.
“Come on,” he prompted.
Amber didn’t move, so he took her arm and forced her to her feet.
“Let’s get to the ground floor, as slowly as we can,” he said.
“The ground floor?”
“Surely it would be the best place to find a way out?”
He guided her to the stairs, and down another floor, where she halted.
“But – what if he’s there?”
Luke went to answer, but somehow his answer was interrupted by the manic screams of their brother coming from below.
30
The man had expected Gray to run.
One thing he had found from experience was that human behaviour was highly predictable.
Not that it’s silly to try and run from immediate danger, of course not – it’s instinct. It’s just that they all ran the same way with the same expression and the same terror smacked across their face.
It was just too easy for the man to hastily withdraw a sharp kitchen knife, dive to his knees, and stick it into the back of a fleeing heel of the predictable oaf trying to escape.
Escape.
Hah!
Where did he expect to escape to?
They were shuttered in.
Again, the predictability. People will run even if there is nowhere to run to. They will hide until they are found, and him finding them was as inevitable as death or birth or anything in between.
Gray screamed as he collapsed.
The man admired his work, the blade sticking out at a perfect point from the rear of Gray’s foot.
Gray screamed again as the man snatched the knife out.
He let Gray drag himself out of the room, leaving a bloody trail that was going to be a bitch to clean up later.
But he wanted Gray to reach the base of the stairs, as it meant the other two would be able to see their brother’s corpse from above. He wanted to scare them, to draw them out, to push them to revealing their position or, at the very least, become reckless with fear.
So he trailed slowly behind, watching Gray slime forward. Like a snail, leaving a line of gunk behind him.
He made himself laugh at the simile.
Luckily, the floor wasn’t carpet. Otherwise he would not be laughing.
Finally, Gray reached the b
ase of the stairs.
This is where he wanted to do it.
He strode forward this time, walking with a purpose he previously hadn’t, and plunged the knife into the back of Gray’s right thigh.
Another scream.
Predictable.
Why do they always scream? Especially when shuttered inside a house at least three-hundred yards from any other.
What do they hope to accomplish?
He plunged the knife into the base of Gray’s spine.
Gray’s entire nervous system responded. Flinching, spasming, his right arm shooting out, his legs flickering with random energy.
After the flickers had died down, Gray tried to use his body, but found himself unable.
The man enjoyed this part the most. When he could see their hope fading. When paralysis would set in and they couldn’t move yet they still tried, still adamantly struggling against it, still somehow believing they were going to suddenly be able to use their limbs again.
Gray wasn’t going to move or walk any time soon.
Or ever again, for that matter.
A gentle thundering of footsteps came from above.
They had heard. They were about to witness it.
Gray didn’t want to deny them the show.
He tightened his apron, ensuring he was not about to ruin his suit.
He went to his knee beside Gray’s head, grabbed the back of his victim’s hair and lifted the hopeless face.
Gray’s eyes still darted back and forth, still denying what was about to happen, still rejecting what was inevitable.
The man, wanting to show off what he was doing, looked up.
There they were.
The girl – Amber.
The boy – Luke.
Both peering over a banister, staring down, looking for the source of the sound of their brother’s pain.
And, for the two seconds in which their eyes met, his dick hardened and his body tingled. He held their eyes for those two long seconds, dragging them out into slow motion, searching their souls as they searched his.
They wouldn’t find one.
He swung the knife and stuck it into the exposed skin of Gray’s throat, just half an inch beside his Adam’s apple, and twisted it.
The two faces disappeared with a gasp, and their feet thudded the soundtrack to their departure.
Gray’s mouth hung open, sucking in air that that never arrived, a trickle of outward breath without any breath in it.
He withdrew the knife and stuck it into Gray’s throat again. This time he dragged it across, cutting Gray’s Adam’s apple in two, slicing it like afternoon fruit, taking the knife back out again once a complete one-hundred-and-eighty-degree slit had been formed.
He let go of Gray’s hair, letting the head thump to the surface.
Gray’s body was empty. The population of thoughts had escaped the home of his mind. The fear had been removed.
It was foreplay.
Damn good foreplay, but that was all it was.
But, as we all know, as is predictably inevitable, foreplay has to end and the real pleasure has to begin.
He began to climb the stairs.
31
He was dead.
Gray was dead.
Was he dead?
She’d seen a knife enter his throat, but she’d moved away before she could see his dead face.
Oh, God.
Did I just think those words?
Dead… face…
His dead face.
He could still be alive.
Couldn’t he?
She shook her head and covered her face with her hands.
Even if she didn’t acknowledge it to herself, she knew that it was denial. The most common yet useless of human reactions.
The guy had stuck a knife into Gray’s throat and twisted it.
There was no ambulance coming.
No help was on the way.
There was no way he could survive that…
“He’s dead…” she whispered, not sure why she suddenly had to say it aloud.
“Come on!” Luke urged her, grabbing her arm, but it was like grabbing hold of a tree or someone walking in water.
The next image that projected into the slideshow of horrors in her mind was that of the man. Unblemished skin smoothed down collar, top button done up, apron over suit, hair gelled to the side, swept with precision – this man.
The guy driving the Mercedes.
Killing Gray.
Killing.
Gray.
Killing.
“Amber! Move!”
She looked to his arm, still attached to hers, hurting from the grip around her bicep but feeling none of the pain.
“I have to see…” she said.
“What? Have to see what?”
“If he’s dead… I have to see…”
She edged back to the banister, but Luke pulled her away.
“We have to hide! Get out of here! Call the police or something!”
“We don’t have our phones…”
“We don’t have time!”
“I have to… I have to see…”
She edged back to the banister. He held onto her.
“Amber, please,” he said, no longer confident or forceful, but weak and pleading.
“I have to…”
He reluctantly let her go, standing back, and she peered over the banister once more.
Sure enough, Gray’s motionless body lay face down in an ever-expanding pool of blood. Her hands covered her gasp but there was little else she could do.
Gray had just been murdered before her.
Murdered before her.
Murdered.
The man looked up.
She saw him, but she didn’t.
Of course, she looked at him, watching as he walked up the stairs, looking back up at her – but she didn’t consciously acknowledge him, same as she hadn’t acknowledged the colour of the floorboards or creak of the steps, such was her focus on Gray.
The man caught her eye. He was on the second floor now, approaching the third.
He was walking slowly. Why wasn’t he running? Why was he just grinning at them, instead of chasing them?
Because he knows we’re trapped… That we have nowhere we can run…
He entered the stairs of the third floor, still looking up, still beaming that lecherous smirk.
“Amber!”
Luke’s screaming of her name snapped her out of a trance she hadn’t consented to.
This time she allowed him to pull her away, allowed his hand to clasp tightly around her arm and drag her down the corridor.
“You’re hurting me,” she said, but her voice was lost.
Luke tried the next door, and the next, and the next, meeting nothing but locked doors.
They could hear his footsteps now.
They could hear him approaching.
Luke barged into a door, wishing it would buckle, but nothing. Absolutely nothing.
They turned a corner, moving from a brisk walk to a run. Luke could now let go of Amber’s arm, assured that she would follow, and was able to us both hands to try opening doors.
He finally found one that was open.
They entered it and immediately regretted doing so.
32
This had worked out perfectly.
As far as he was concerned, anyway.
There they were on the fifth floor, trying doors and seeing if one was unlocked. They would be rushing from locked door to locked door, maybe even trying to bash one down, maybe even barge one open.
But there was only one room that was unlocked.
And he knew which one it was.
And he hoped they found it.
He grinned, picturing their reaction as they entered.
The trophy room.
His favourite room.
In the middle of the room, a swivel chair, which could turn to any of the walls. On every wall, four lines of shelves, perfect dist
ance from one another, the top and bottom equal distance from the ceiling and floor respectively.
On them, his trophies.
In boxes and cabinets with transparent screens that would allow him to sit there in an evening and admire his skillset.
Everyone has a talent.
And at school, they were encouraged to explore their talents.
At his school, which was the best of the best, everyone had many talents. Violin, piano, rugby, art, drama, whatever – but no one had a talent like he did.
And that first trophy was from the school bully, on the far bottom left of the left wall.
Just a single finger, kept in cool conditions to preserve it perfectly. The middle finger too, metaphorically removing the bully’s ability to say fuck you to anyone else.
Before he fed Eve and Sheila to his pigs, he planned to pick his trophy and display it proudly along with the others.
Eve was a whore, so she needed something that fit her role. He could take her tongue, maybe, which he had found to be her strongest asset, and place it next to the carved clitoris of the German exchange student he’d met in Glasgow three years ago.
Sheila was an innocent little child and he had treasured her smile, but he had enough lips already. He could also say she had a good heart, but he had three of them.
He liked her hair. Maybe a few strands would do.
Gray.
Ooh, Gray.
He wasn’t a particularly good-looking fellow. He wasn’t necessarily bad looking, but there were no features that stuck out as must-haves.
He wondered what Luke and Amber would be like.
Ooh, Amber. From the brief glance he’d been afforded, he had deduced that she was pretty.
There were many parts of her he’d like to keep.
He reached the fifth floor.
He looked down at his apron as he sauntered through the corridor. It was a mess, and he wanted to be presentable when he finally met Amber and Luke.
You only have one chance to make a first impression.
He took it off.
He didn’t want to mess up his suit, but he had plenty, he could afford to lose it. And he wouldn’t be willing to do that with just anyone! There weren’t many bodies he’d be happy to throw out a suit for.
But he could already taste Amber, and she tasted so good.