Hunting Angels (Box Set) (The great horror writers (Masterton, Saul, Herbert) and now Jones)

by Conrad Jones

  Two of them responded quickly but baldy hesitated and eyed me suspiciously. I fired a shot above him. The lead shot blew a hole in the roof bringing down a landslide of grit and filthy debris. It was more than enough to discourage him from arguing. He hit the floor like a sack of spuds giving me the opportunity to glance behind me. A young girl was sat on the floor tied to a roof support. She was gagged and blindfolded. Her long blond hair hung lankly to her shoulders. She was struggling against her restraints causing a small avalanche of dust to fall from the pitched ceiling, showering her with powdery grime. “Stay calm, Constance,” I shouted. “I’ll have you out in a minute.”

  “He’s not the police.” Baldy hissed to the others.

  “What do you mean?” whispered ponytail.

  “He’s on his own.”

  “Shut up!” I shouted. I walked over to them and put my haversack on the floor. “I’m the man that barbecues niners,” I looked at their reactions, “one wrong word from any of you and I’ll blow your fucking balls off, get it?” They nodded that they understood, the colour draining from their faces. “Get up, Baldy,” I aimed the gun as I spoke. He was the mouthy one and therefore the one most likely to cause me problems. “Sit on the chair.”

  He sat down as instructed. “She’ll find you eventually,” he sneered. “You have no idea what she is.” The look on his face was one of disdain, disgust and an almost perverse superiority. “You’re a dead man but you haven’t realised it yet. Do you know what she is? I don’t think you have a clue what she can do to those who cross us!” His expression of disgust really bothered me.

  “She doesn’t scare me.” I lied.

  “She’ll eat you alive, you fool.”

  “She hasn’t done so far.”

  “Do you have any idea how many of us there are?” he scoffed like a schoolboy bragging about how big his dad is. “Taking your daughter is just a message. It’s nothing to what we can do to you. You do not understand what we are capable of!”

  “Maybe not but the mistake that you’re making is not understanding what I’m capable of.” I saw fear in his eyes as I raised the gun. I pulled the trigger twice and blew the annoying expression off his face, along with his head. Ponytail whimpered like a wounded dog and Greybeard retched. Blood and globules of grey matter splattered their faces. Constance let out a scream, the sound muffled by the gag. “Constance,” I called, “I need you to stay still and do not panic, no matter what you hear. I’ll come and untie you in a couple of minutes. Do you understand me?”

  She nodded silently although I could see her legs were trembling and a puddle of urine began to spread beneath her. I turned my attention back to the horrified niners. “I was going to tie you up and leave you here until the police arrived but I’m beginning to get the impression that you lot think that I’m some kind of cockroach running and hiding under a rock somewhere.”

  “I don’t think that,” Ponytail stuttered.

  “I’m not hiding from you fucking perverts,” I explained calmly. “I’m hunting you.” I smiled but they didn’t return the gesture. “I guess I’m going to have to spell it out to that bitch and the rest of you, that if you try and hurt the people that I know or my family then you’ll pay tenfold with your lives. Get up, Ponytail!”

  He put his hands together as if in prayer. “Please don’t kill me.” His eyes were closed so that he couldn’t see the ruined body of his friend. “I’ll do anything you ask if you let me live.”

  “Okay, let’s see shall we,” I tossed a bundle of cable ties onto the floor in front of him. “Tie him up with those, two around the ankles and two around the wrists.”

  Ponytail scurried off on his hands and knees. His hands were shaking so much that he fumbled clumsily with the zip ties. He avoided looking at the headless corpse which was still sitting upright on its chair. The cloying smell of excrement mingled with the coppery smell of blood. Baldy’s bowels had relaxed upon death, releasing his waste into his trousers. “Your friend is starting to stink already,” I commented on Baldy’s deterioration. “Do you think he’s gone to help Jennifer’s boss on the dark side?”

  Ponytail just stared at me his lip shaking like an epileptic pink slug beneath his moustache. He obviously didn’t have an opinion to share with me. “I don’t think he’s gone to hell to be a dark angel,” I offered mine regardless. “I think he’s just a dead paedophile with shit in his pants.”

  Tears ran from Ponytail’s eyes.

  “Was he married?” I asked.

  Ponytail nodded.

  “Kids?”

  Another affirmative nod.

  “I feel sorry for them, don’t you?”

  He nodded.

  “Not because their father is dead,” I said making sure that he understood my point, “because they’ll find out what their father really was. That’s the sad part. You see, I don’t get it,” I kept the gun on him and crouched down to his eye level. “How can you have kids of your own but abuse someone else’s child?”

  Silence.

  “Take his phone off him,” I ordered once the bonds were fixed to greybeard. Ponytail rummaged through his pockets and brought out a Samsung. “Put it on camera mode.” His hands shook as he scrolled through the apps until he found it. “Select video mode.” His eyes widened in shock as the realisation of his dilemma dawned on him. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Don’t you want anyone to realise what you’ve done? Family, wife, kids, boss, workmates?”

  “I’d rather die.” His eyes glazed over and he stood up. He dropped the Samsung onto the floor and stamped on it with his right foot. The screen split and the casing clattered across the dusty boards in several pieces.

  “Okay,” I sighed. His eyes focused on me as the enormity of what he’d said hit home. I squeezed the trigger twice more blasting him off his feet, two bloody rents in his chest pumped his life fluid onto the floor. His lacerated lungs hissed like a punctured balloon in a bath of water. “Some people just don’t like disappointing their loved ones, eh?” I said to Greybeard. “How do you feel about it?”

  “I don’t want to die,” he croaked, his voice breaking. “I tried to get out of this, years ago.”

  “You didn’t try hard enough,” my sympathy was none existent. I searched Baldy’s pockets and took his Blackberry. The stench was now palpable. “I’m going to call the police now and when I’ve explained where we are, you’re going to tell the operator who you are and what you’ve done. Understand?” He closed his eyes and nodded. I dialled 999 and asked for the police. “I need the police at the Cronton Saw Mill, Tarbock Green, off Water Lane,” I paused, “Constance Bonner, the kidnapped girl from the Midlands is being held here. There have been gunshots and there are two dead.”

  The operator began asking a stream of questions but I placed the phone on the floor next to greybeard’s head. “Tell them who you are and why she was kidnapped,” I aimed the gun at his head. “If you lie once, your brains will be all over that wall.”

  “My name is David Wilder and I’m involved in the kidnapping of the girl.”

  “Tell them her name,” I ordered.

  “Her name is Constance Bonner.”

  “Tell them why.”

  “She was kidnapped because she’s the daughter of Conrad Jones.”

  “Tell them who you belong to.”

  “I’m a member of The Order of Nine Angels.”

  I left him sobbing in the dirt and ran to Constance. I cut through her bonds and lifted her to her feet. I removed the gag and pulled off her blindfold. Her eyes showed terror in them. I realised that I still had the ski mask on. Pulling it off, I reached for a bottle of water and put it to her lips. She gulped thirstily from it. I could see her mother in her features but I didn’t recognise any of mine. Not that it mattered now, but I knew there and then that she wasn’t my blood. I kept my body between her and the carnage behind me. “I want you to close your eyes while I carry you down the stairs, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said her voice a whis
per.

  I lifted her like a doll and carried her quickly down the creaking steps. The double doors were unlocked and I put my back against them and pushed them open. The fresh air was invigorating, a stark contrast from the reek of death. I put her down on the weed strewn tarmac that led to the road. The sound of the first responding police car whined in the distance. “Now I need you to trust me okay?”

  “Okay,” she whispered again. “I want my mummy.”

  “The police are coming,” I cocked my head and smiled. “Can you hear them?”

  Constance nodded and bit her lip. “I thought you were the police.”

  “No, but I had to tell the bad men that,” I shook my head. “Now listen to me. I need you to run down this road until the police car reaches you, okay?”

  “I’m scared,” she tightened the grip on my hand. “I want to stay with you until they get here.”

  “I know you are frightened but I’m going to stay here and make sure that none of the bad men follow you, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Now run.”

  Constance took one last teary look at me and then bolted down the road. She moved quickly for one so young. I waited until a curve in the road hid her from view and then I sprinted into the rapeseed and headed back the way I’d come. I knew that she would be safe now. My hunt for Jennifer Booth would continue but I knew then that I had to intensify my search for her before she got to my family and friends again. Once she was dead I could try and restart my life somewhere. That was my plan, but as usual my plans would turn to dust in front of my eyes.

  Chapter 1

  With Constance safe, I had to reassess how to find my target. Their belief that Jennifer was indeed a goddess was undoubtedly the root of their loyalty. They feared her and revered her too. She’s their living Jesus. I didn’t believe that she is and my goal was to remove her from the face of the earth. When I found her, I planned to kill her very publicly so that her followers couldn’t fail to know that she was dead and gone. I wanted to make sure that pictures of her dead body were broadcast across the world so that they would realise that she was nothing more than an evil bitch with a sick twisted mind.

  **************

  That was the plan then and things went quiet for a while. In my search for her, I have moved from one place to another running from the law and hunting her followers along the way. The Order of Nine Angles is the most depraved religious tract on this planet and because I'd exposed some of their members in a book, they had tried to kill me. I am both hunter and hunted. Up until a few months ago, there was no sign of Jennifer and her niners, as they like to call themselves. I’d almost given up finding her until I met Max Blackman.

  Although I was becoming expert at tracking them down using the mobile phones, which I took from the dead ones, I hadn’t had a sniff at the whereabouts of Jennifer Booth for months. She’d sent me a message, months before telling me that she was carrying my child but I had heard nothing since then. Looking back, some may say that it is because she told me that she was pregnant that I’m plagued by my recurring nightmare, but I know the dreams began months before she called me. Maybe I knew that she was pregnant. I don’t believe that she’s immortal but there was definitely a mental connection between us. I am forever sceptical about such things but then I’m always sceptical about things which have no plausible scientific explanation. Whatever it was, my search for her had gone cold.

  It was quite by accident that I stumbled across Blackman, although the circumstances in which he became infamous had sent ripples of fear across the world. The newspapers and television were plastered with the news of the arrest of a Welsh man called Dewi Critchley. He was originally arrested for the kidnap and rape of a young man who lived locally but when the police searched his farmhouse, the dismembered remains of numerous unidentified males were found. Human organs were found in the fridge and freezer and Critchley was in the process of cooking a human liver in the oven. They had discovered the lair of a serial killer that they did not know existed. Echoes of Dennis Nilsen and Jeffrey Dahmer sounded across the Western World, another cannibal killer discovered by accident.

  Critchley was big news but the story only began to interest me when it became clear that he was an occultist. The more the evidence was uncovered, the more convinced I was that his murders were committed to satisfy his ritual fantasies. Initially, there was only a drip feed of information from the police but I was immediately suspicious that he was a niner. An altar had been discovered in his cellar along with human remains and ceremonial paraphernalia. Ornately carved goblets contained congealed human blood and a selection of razor sharp ceremonial knives were collected and sent away for DNA examination. I saw television pictures of the cellar under forensic examination. They had sprayed Luminol, a chemical that exhibits chemiluminescence, creating a striking blue glow when it comes into contact with blood trace. It reacts with iron found in haemoglobin. The glow lasts for about 30 seconds, but the effect can be documented by a long-exposure photograph. The cellar floor was awash with blood splatter. Investigators said it was equivalent to testing the killing floor of a slaughterhouse.

  Dewi Critchley had converted the cellar beneath his farmhouse into a full blown satanic temple. His farmhouse was situated on the green slopes of the Dee valley, close to Snowdonia on the outskirts of a village called Carrog. The village consists of a few dozen houses, a post office, a church, a primary school and a pub, all clustered around a 17th century stone bridge spanning the river. Wooded slopes rise steeply on either side, turning in to dramatic rocky crags near the summits. The surroundings are picture postcard and the beautiful setting is the last place that you would expect such evil to be cultivated. The truth is that buildings and places are not evil it’s the people who dwell there that manifest its power.

  When I searched the internet for historical news of occultism in the area, a string of reports in the local papers reported the desecration of churches and graveyards going back to late 1980’s. The more I searched, the more I found. As I’ve said many times, Google it if you don’t believe me. Search for ‘witches in North Wales’ and a dozen articles appear on the first page. The spate of vandalism was put down to a handful of bored teenagers, but the more I looked into them, the more it was obvious that the vandalism and daubing of occult symbols on churches was only the tip of a black iceberg. Satanism had a foothold in the mountains and valleys of North Wales.

  Over the following weeks, the police released numerous updates about the gory findings at the farmhouse and photographs of Critchley were published as his neighbours scrabbled to earn a few pounds from the ravenous press, by rooting out their old pictures. They ranged from class photographs at school, to images of him in the background at family functions. One of them pictured Critchley dressed in a goatskin robe during some kind of fancy dress party. The numeral 9 was painted below his left ear in what looked like blood. The press assumed it was an upside down 6, as in 666, the mark of the Devil, but I recognised it as the mark of a niner. That was all the proof I needed to convince me that he was a member of the Order of Nine Angels. My ears pricked up when I realised that he was definitely involved with the cult and I followed the news closely as I packed up my meagre belongings.

  I needed to be close to the investigation. Carrog is a tiny village and it has only a few beds for tourists. I knew that the press would have block-booked whatever accommodation was available and I also knew that my presence there would not go unnoticed, so I drove to the larger neighbouring town of Llangollen. I found accommodation in a small guest house close to the edge of the River Dee, which ran through both Carrog and Llangollen. Niners are never individual practitioners of the dark arts; they worship in groups. Whenever I had found one of them, there was a cluster of other members nearby. I knew that Critchley wouldn’t be acting alone, so I waited for an opportunity to arise to find his affiliates. Somewhere in the investigation there would be a name or an address loosely connected to the case that I could follow w
ithout drawing attention to myself.

  The police hunt for me was no longer front page news but I was still high up on the wanted list. I had to be very careful but this was too good an opportunity to miss. All I needed was one loose end to catch onto and I could uncover an entire sinister nest. There was no way that Critchley would have practised alone and I wanted to talk to his fellow sinister members. If I found any of them, then I knew that it would be a conversation that they wouldn’t enjoy or survive. My experience had taught me that when you find one of the evil bastards, they are only too willing to give up a few more names to save themselves, especially when they are looking down the barrel of a shotgun. I killed them regardless of the information they gave me. That might sound callous and cold-blooded, but in my mind they had lost the right to mercy when they became niners. They have been trying to kill me for years now and the trail of dead niners that I’ve left behind means that if I’m ever caught, I’ll serve life in prison. Once digested into the prison system, I would be an easy target for them. The prisons are full of the right-wing extremists who affiliated with the niners. They live for violence and they would get me in the end. I’d already lost everything so finding and eradicating them was the only thing that I had left. Critchley had lifted the lid on a nexion so there I was in Llangollen, hunting angels.

  Llangollen is a small market town with a population of 6,000 inhabitants, which is tripled in the summer months as tourists flock there to enjoy the romantic beauty of the Welsh mountains. When I arrived, there was a buzz about the town. News of the horror in the nearby village had acted like a magnet for journalists from all over the world. The pubs and guest houses were crammed with huddles of reporters and television crews gossiping, swapping and searching for titbits of information about the case. It is easy to hide in a crowd, so I blended in and enjoyed the anonymity of it all. I listened to dozens of conversations every day, sifting through the names and places attached to the case, waiting for an obvious place to start.