Utopia: A Dark Thriller: Complete Edition

by Adam Steel

  ‘Uh Humm…Eric…you there?’ she said, and thought, Of course he was in there, she’d seen him go in, hadn’t she.

  She suddenly felt very stupid. What am I doing? I should go this is all getting very stupid.

  The door opened half-way and Eric popped his head around it. He was a wiry little man and his bottle-lenses glasses made him look like he had enormous eyes.

  ‘Ah…Dr Rutherford…Come in, please,’ he said, almost expectantly.

  ‘Ellie…It’s Ellie,’ she replied sounding surprised.

  Eric held the door open wide; inviting her in and offering her the ‘guest’ chair at the tiny table. He was wearing a pair of green overalls. It was cosy in the boiler room. The concrete floor was dusted with a covering of dried plant compost and dead bugs. It had a pleasant smell of dried herbs, which were hanging in bunches above the boiler pipes. There were dust-covered cobwebs , hanging over the electrical wires below the low ceiling. A row of tiny windows looked out into the glass house. Eric had suspended some nets in front of them using the same twine which he used to tie up the plants. He had made a curtain from several potato sacks that he had stitched together. The sack curtain concealed half of the room. He had made it homely. Eric’s place reminded her of a time when she was a little girl. She used to help her father in his potting shed. It had the same smell. Her father had a comfy chair in the potting shed where they used to sit, eat sandwiches and listen to the radio. Through the thin material (and a gap in the sacking) Ellie could see Eric’s bed. It had an old woollen blanket. It was of the type that used to be sold many years ago in the Army and Navy surplus stores. It was neatly folded, with a stripy pillow to finish it off. A very large cat, with a mass of long, curly hair, was curled up on his bed. It was fast asleep. Eric noticed her looking at the cat.

  ‘That’s Amadeus,’ he said, looking back at the cat.

  ‘We get rats up here.’

  Rats, Ellie thought. She had the sudden urge to leave. She hated rats. This is a mistake.

  ‘I’m sorry to intrude Eric,’ she began.

  ‘Please, sit down and have a cup of tea. The kettle’s just boiled, it’s nearly ready,’ he said, smiling.

  Ellie suddenly felt very awkward. His polite manners surprised her. She didn’t want to offend him, so she sat down on a rickety wooden chair. The tiny table in front of her was set with a tea pot and two mugs. In his makeshift kitchen she noticed that he had made a bowl full of salad from the tomatoes, cucumber and other things he had been picking earlier. There was a kettle boiling on the portable stove and various cooking items. A little bowl of sugar and a small white milk jug with a chip in the lip were sitting on a wooden tray that looked like it had been hand-made. The tea-pot (on the table in front of her) was a very old porcelain one. It had a circle of rabbits which danced happily around it. There were two mugs on the table, one had a picture of an orchid on it, and the other had a cat on it. He had made the best of a poor situation. She felt like an intruder.

  ‘Thank you, but honestly…only if you’re sure,’ Ellie said.

  Before she had chance to say anything else Eric said, ‘I guess you’re missing your friend. The one with the curly red hair,’

  He put the tray down on the table and then returned to the stove. He glanced at her sideways, and then sat down and poured the boiling water into the tea pot. His fingers were bony and veins protruded from the back of his hand. Ellie wasn’t expecting him to say that, and she sounded surprised when she replied.

  ‘Er…Well…Yes…Irene…that’s right. I was going to ask you if you had seen her tonight?’

  Eric placed the cup with the orchid on it in front of her and poured the steaming tea. The tea-pot shook when he lifted the heavy pot.

  ‘Help yourself to milk. Sugar?’ he insisted, avoiding the immediate topic of Irene.

  He pushed the wooden tray with the bowl of sugar and the milk jug towards her. There was a spoon in the sugar that had been put back wet, and the sugar had welded itself in a lump to it.

  ‘No sugar….thanks. About Dr Sharpe….Irene,’ Ellie asked again

  She took the orchid mug and poured a little of the milk from the chipped jug into it.

  ‘Pretty mug Eric…I love Orchids,’ she said, trying to be polite and wondering why he was avoiding her questions.

  ‘Parasites,’ he replied.

  ‘Pardon,’ Ellie remarked.

  ‘Beneath their beauty they are nothing but parasites. Did you know that orchids use fungi as food? They even produce their sugary sweetness to tempt the fungi into their trap. Then when they have them, they hold them prisoner, feeding off their bodies. They dissolve the fungal tissue and use it to grow. Parasites - beautiful parasites. There are no orchids in this glass house except the one on this mug. They gave it to me as a present. I don’t like it.’

  ‘Oh…I see,’ Ellie replied.

  She was looking at him wondering how to make a quick exit without seeming in too much of a hurry. He’s definitely been up here too long, she thought, what in God’s name’s is he talking about. Parasites and orchids! I’m getting no answers at all.

  Eric had put five teaspoons of sugar into his tea and was stirring it around making a whirlpool.

  Ellie was getting impatient.

  ‘Irene, my friend, said that she would be here at 9:00 p.m. and she hasn’t arrived. I was wondering…if maybe…you had seen her?’

  Eric looked at her through his milk bottle spectacles. His eyes looked huge. If he were a frog, his eyes would have suited him. He put his wet teaspoon back in the sugar bowl and started to chant.

  ‘Irene, Irene where have you been

  Up to the glass house to visit the queen

  Irene, Irene will you ever be seen

  Irene, Irene - goodnight Irene’

  Ellie half-laughed, a nervous utterance, he’s nuts. Leave NOW. She didn’t know what to say in response. This was more Bridget’s realm of experience than hers. Then Eric became sullen and serious.

  ‘Your friend was here,’ he said, in a brooding voice.

  ‘What?! - she was…When?’ Ellie asked, sounding bewildered.

  ‘Just before you arrived,’ he answered, almost in a defeated tone of voice.

  ‘Where did she go?’ she questioned further. And why the heck didn’t you tell me earlier, instead of having me wait an age, while you make tea, and prat around.

  ‘She left with the man…down the back stairs,’ he replied, looking down at his empty tea mug.

  ‘She was supposed to be meeting me…I-I don’t understand. What man? Do you know who the man was?’ Ellie said, sounding upset. Really, she thought, Irene was just getting too much these days.

  ‘Nope…but he’s been here before: meeting other people. I seen’ ‘im through the nets,’ he said, and his eyes widened slightly.

  Ellie frowned.

  ‘Was he an ISIAH employee? A Doctor perhaps?’ she asked and looked straight into his frog-like eyes.

  ‘Not a doctor. He’s one of them. Those with the dark glasses. He hides his face, but I knows’ it’s the same man. The plants don’t like him.’

  ‘They don’t!’ she humoured. That’s it. He’s making no sense at all, she thought.

  ‘They like you,’ he added, smiling at her in a way that reminded her of a lost child.

  She felt suddenly very sorry for him and wished that she had not been so impatient.

  ‘That’s nice…uhuh,’ she said, and coughed. What’s he talking about? What man with Irene. Maybe it wasn’t Irene at all. That’s it he’s just confused. I’m wasting my time here, Ellie thought. ‘Eric…If Irene shows up here, would you tell her that I was looking for her and would you ask her to phone me straight away, please. Would you do that for me?’

  ‘I would, but there’s no point. She won’t come back,’ he said, looking down into the empty cup.

  He had a sad expression on his face and then he began talking slowly and softly.

  ‘She was pretty. I liked her curly red hair. Do
ll’s hair,’ he said, sadly.

  ‘Yes, well I better get going, thank you for the tea Eric,’ she said, getting up to go. What the hell, she thought.

  Eric opened the door for her, and as she left, he said, ‘Good night Doctor Ellie. Watch out for the orchids.’

  Eric retreated back into his boiler room, closing the door on the silent glass house with its star studded roof. Ellie stood for a moment outside his door. She was very confused. She looked at her watch it was nearly 10:00 p.m. and getting dark outside. The sky was clear and the blue moon was shining through the glass house. She walked down through the rows of tall plants in the quiet darkness. The moonlight twinkled on the glistening plants. She stepped outside onto the roof area into the cool night air. An uncomfortable feeling tickled her neck: not the cool breeze, something else. Friday the thirteenth, she thought and shivered. She made her way down the stairs to the bright lights of the hospital wards. As she walked through the quiet wards, she phoned Jon Li to tell him that she would be very late and that she was going to Irene’s house and not worry about where she was.

  She was thinking about Eric’s weird poem: about the orchids: and about Irene as she made her way to Irene’s house in Sector Five. By the time she arrived it was late, and dark, except for the moonlight. It had got colder and she was not wearing suitable clothes for being out at night. There was still no reply to the calls she had made to Irene’s home or her Info-Pad.

  Irene lived with her Aunty Audrey. Ellie expected that even if Irene was not home, then her Aunty would have been, as she hardly ever went out at night, “on account of her arthritis,” she had said. Ellie walked up the street where Irene lived. There were a lot of trees and hedges and the houses were spaced apart with long drives and high brick walls. It was quite a walk from the monorail station and she was getting tired and cold by the time she reached the house. Irene’s house (or rather Aunt Audrey’s house) was at the end of the street and had larger than average gardens, even for that area. The huge old building had original bay windows and red brick walls. It also had a long tree lined drive that curved around from the road. Visitors could not see the house until they had walked a fair way up the drive. Ellie had been there many times in the day. It was a lovely old house with many rooms and gorgeous, rambling gardens. This night, it was in darkness, and the path was lit only by the moonlight.

  Ellie fumbled in her pocket and pulled out her Info-Pad and used it as a torch to find her way up to the path towards the house. Something flapped and fluttered in the trees above her, a scared wood-pigeon. She thought about phoning Jon Li to tell him that the house was in darkness and that they must be out so she was coming back, but stopped.

  The front door was open. She hesitated and then took a few steps closer and looked inside. It was black inside the hallway. Ellie had a horrible feeling that perhaps Irene and Aunty Audrey had gone out together and, while they were out, they had been burgled. But this is a safe neighbourhood and Aunty Audrey never goes out, especially on cold nights, she answered herself, subconsciously. Ellie pushed the front door open further and shone the torch up the hallway where it opened into the kitchen area.

  ‘Irene….Aunty Audrey,’ she called out. Her voice was faltering.

  Ellie hesitated on the doorstep. She could feel the gooseflesh rising on her body.

  The moonlight was shining through the kitchen window and it illuminated the table in the middle of the kitchen. She could make out a black shape sitting between the doorway of the kitchen at the end of the hall. It was Aunty Audrey’s cat, Jasper.

  ‘Jasper…come here boy,’ she whispered, making a ‘clicking’ noise with her fingers.

  Jasper “meeowed” faintly.

  ‘Jasper…come on,’ she coaxed.

  She crouched down and held out her hand. The cat trotted along the corridor towards her “meeowing” as it approached. She bent over and picked him up.

  ‘There, there Jasper, where’s your Aunty then?’

  The cat was anxious. It struggled to get down. It had sticky wet feet and Ellie put it down and it jumped into the garden under the bushes. The wet stickiness had got on to her clothes and it had a familiar smell to it.

  Ellie froze.

  Her brain recognised (and remembered) the smell, long before her conscious mind could tell her exactly what it was. Her brain knew particular group of chemicals had that metallic signature and it sent a message to her heart. It beat so hard, that she could hear it in her ears.

  ‘Irene…Irene…Aunty Audrey,’ she called out frantically.

  Ellie moved cautiously up the hallway, shining the Info-Pad in front of her. When she reached the doorway the light. She silently cursed the Info-Pad, as she recalled the warning message earlier.

  “Low battery recharge now.”

  The only light came from the moonlight pouring into the kitchen. All her senses told her to run – but one – small, terrified part of her – had to make sure, what if someone’s here. In the house. With me. Hiding. Please don’t let it be a burglar, or a rapist, or worse, that man who had stabbed the teacher in the Utopic. Her imagination started to run away with her. This is madness. I wish Jon Li was here right now. The moonlight shone so brightly through the kitchen window that she could see the table and chairs in the middle, and Aunty Audrey’s plants on the window ledge. Two orchids, Jesus, this is stupid, Eric’s put the spooks up me with his stupid poems and stories about strange men and stuff about orchids, she thought.

  She flicked the light switch up and down a few times but it didn’t work. She knew that Aunty Audrey kept a torch that ran on batteries under the sink unit, “just in case,” she had said. Ellie felt her way around the table to the sink unit and using the stone, sink edge as a guide, she crouched down on the floor. She ran her hands down the doors until they stopped on the round door knobs. She was on her knees when she opened the sink unit doors and felt around inside on the lower shelf for the torch. There was something very unnerving about putting her naked hand into the dark cupboard and feeling around in the unknown space. She knocked over bottles. They clattered on to the floor. She jumped, Jesus, if there is anyone in here they would have heard that noise, cloths, boxes, pegs, where the hell is it? Got it, she thought. She slammed the doors shut before anything else fell out. Her nerves were in shreds, and she couldn’t turn the switch on, because her hands were shaking so much. The torch-light flicked into life, and its narrow beam illuminated the floor.

  Ellie immediately backed up against the sink cupboards and her body went rigid. She slid down the unit on to her backside with her knees in front of her. The door knobs bumped her on the back of her head. The beam of light was shining across the floor over a pool of liquid - dark brown liquid - congealed and sticky.

  Blood. A lot of blood.

  She shone the torch around the room, up the units, all around the kitchen and across the floor. Jasper’s footprints led from the pool of blood down the hallway. She looked at her hands in the torch light. They were covered in blood from Jasper’s paws.

  Her mouth went dry and a terrifying cold feeling crawled up her spine and nested in her brain. Eric had said she wouldn’t be coming back. Eric’s poem Goodnight Irene, repeated over and over in her mind. Images of the newspaper article of the murdered teacher, tore through her terrified mind faster than a blade cutting flesh.

  Friday the thirteenth – a night of terror.

  Her hands were shaking so much that it took both of them to hold the torch steady. For what seemed like an eternity, she was unable to move. In reality it had only been a second. Her chest felt like it would burst from the thudding of her heart. She stumbled to get up and edge herself away from the kitchen and out into the hall. She crept along the corridor with her back to the wall, until she reached the front room. The door was wide open. It was empty. The dining room, opposite, was empty too. She shone the torch up the stairs from the hallway to the bedrooms. There were streaks of blood leading up the stairs as though someone had dragged themselves up. She
wanted to run for her own life but the thought of Irene gave her enough courage to go forward. She had to find Irene even though she was absolutely petrified. She crept up the stairs to the landing. The tall window at the end of the row of bedrooms lit the landing with pale moonlight. The bathroom was at the end of the landing above the kitchen and four bedrooms led off, two on the left and two on the right. The beam of light danced up and down the landing reflecting off the mirror that was hanging outside Aunty Audrey’s bedroom. Ellie caught a glimpse of her reflection in it and she nearly fainted from fright thinking it was some else. Aunty Audrey’s bedroom door was open and it was pitch black inside.

  ‘Audrey…you in there Audrey,’ she whispered.

  She could hardly speak. The words came from her throat in a croak. Ellie shone the torch around. It was empty. She moved to the next bedroom which was the spare bedroom for guests. It was also empty. On the opposite side the doors of the two other bedrooms were open. They were empty too. The bathroom door at the end of the landing was closed. It had a skylight in the top of it and the moonlight shone through it lighting up a small part of the landing in front of the door. She crept down to the bathroom door and went to open it, when she noticed the cat’s footprints all over the floor outside of the door. His paw marks were on the door, near the handle. Little brown paw marks. She could hear a trickling sound coming from inside. Ellie slowly turned the slippery door knob. Her hands were sticky. Every ounce of her intuition was screaming don’t go in there. The door swung open and moonlight from the arched window flooded the bathroom with an eerie blue glow.