Carpet Diem

Amelia suddenly regretted sharing what she considered a sweet introduction to Bob’s character.

  “Well, yes, but…”

  “And how do you know exactly what did happen, then? For all you know, the pirate found the idiot stripping you naked and pleasuring himself! In fact, that’s a hell of a lot more likely than that he was standing staring sweetly at you!”

  Ingrid rose to her full, unnatural height again.

  “And then you allowed him to molest you again? How naïve are you, you stupid, stupid girl?”

  “Molest? Mother it was a kiss!” Amelia’s voice was desperate and the tears were running again. Her mother was turning this innocent, pure thing into something dark and horrible.

  “Just a kiss,” Ingrid hissed back at her now inconsolable daughter. “Honestly girl, the man is twice your age and you think he’s some idyllic Romeo? He’s an incorrigible letch, who’s taken advantage of you, you idiot child.”

  Amelia was now struggling to breathe through the sobs.

  “We must make an example of this disgusting pervert. We can’t have people thinking that their servants can come to the island and take advantage of our children. He’ll be tried in the morning and flayed by lunch. Zero tolerance.”

  Amelia had stopped sobbing. Ingrid turned on her heel and marched for the door, slamming it dramatically behind her and turning a key in the lock.

  Amelia’s tears dripped onto her dress as she sat staring after her mother, completely and utterly still. And silent.

  ----

  Cherry materialised in the back garden, ankle deep in snow. The neighbourhood was quiet, except for a couple of drunks singing about something on their way home.

  She slipped her hand into her pocket and held down the button that silenced her phone. The last thing she needed was her mother texting her while she was trying to sneak into a house.

  As the voices disappeared down the road, Cherry crept close to the kitchen window. Her breath fogged it up as she peered inside. Ordinarily, she’d have popped right into the house after Faunt gave her a rundown of the layout. But not this house.

  Faunt’s story had been difficult. All he’d been able to tell her was that a man had been freed who was going to do something that could see Bob, Simon and Harriet dead. Messily dead. But, since he apparently had a ‘non-interference pact’ with this man, he couldn’t even tell her his name. In fact, he couldn’t even directly ask her to help. All he could do was give her another name - Maya Constantine, an address, and the fact that she was in danger. Now.

  The kitchen was dark. But a faint light bled through from another room. She crept slowly across the grass to a set of double glass doors. They were locked. Damn. Through the curtains, though, she could see some vague shadows in a far room. Someone was still up.

  She could also see enough of the room to know it was safe to enter, so pictured herself standing inside the glass doors. The reverberation knocked her off her feet. Damn it; a teleport shield. Either Maya Constantine was a witch, or she knew one.

  Around the side of the building was a half-open window on the first floor. She may not have been able to teleport inside the house, but she could certainly teleport twenty feet up in the air. Checking nobody was watching, she blinked out.

  She climbed in from the window ledge and quietly shut the window. Slowly, she tiptoed to the door of the bathroom and listened for sound outside. Nothing.

  As delicately as she could, she grabbed and turned the old brass handle. As the bolt slipped free, there was a tiny ‘click’–the kind of sound that would never be heard in any normal situation by any reasonable human being. But, of course, exactly the kind of sound that Cherry knew would probably have been heard by the as yet unnamed murderer she’d come here to find in the snow and the dark.

  Fuck.

  She breathed as quietly as possible, waiting for the slightest sound from outside the door; any hint that the snick of metal had given her away. She could feel the sweat beginning to bead on her forehead and under her arms, despite the cold.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Sean stood in front of the door. It was almost one o’clock, which made it ‘the witching hour’–appropriate considering whose door he was about to knock on.

  It had been a weird day. This morning, his biggest concern had been the prospect of facing that stale, morning-after smell that the bar inevitably had every, single day. To clear his head and get a break from it, he’d popped into the garden for a quick blast of nature.

  The day had not exactly gone “downhill” from there; it was more of a rollercoaster. And now, here he was, about to engage in conversation with one of the specifically few people whom he strictly avoided at all costs.

  The Socialites were anything but social, and very well known for disliking everyone –including each other. And he was about to put himself directly in the firing line to help a couple of blokes and a woman he hadn’t even heard of 48 hours ago.

  Then again, what a woman.

  Taking a deep breath, he knocked on the door, secretly hoping that maybe she was out or asleep - or both.

  The door flew open with a pace and ferocity that suggested strongly to Sean that he’d better have a bloody good reason for knocking on it and, frankly, it had best be some very good news.

  “What?” Ingrid barked at him.

  “Hiya, Ingrid” Sean began, “I was wondering …”

  “You were wondering what?” she cut him off, stepping forward to give him an eyeful of her brutal ugliness. “Wondering if I know what that disgusting old pervert did to my daughter? Wondering if I know that you most likely had a hand in it? Wondering if I can prove it?”

  With each question she moved closer and closer, forcing Sean back until he was pressed firmly against the opposite door, with her gruesome visage just inches from his own. Her breath was as bad as her face.

  “You’d better hope I can’t, because I don’t give a damn what your contract says –if I think you’re trying to help that letch get away with molesting my daughter, then I’ll stand you right beside him tomorrow, and strip your flesh too.”

  Saliva dripped from the corner of her mouth, landing on Sean’s chest. Her breath was hot, and he could feel it beginning to condense on his lips.

  “Em, I was wondering,” he recovered, “if you’d like anything from the bar before I close it for the night.” he smiled as agreeably as possible.

  For a long, awful moment, Ingrid stared into his eyes, searching for any trace of treason. But, as they say, when Irish eyes are smiling…

  The witch moved back slowly, until she reached her own threshold and, having moved sufficiently far away, returned to her beautiful façade. She smiled at him like a minister’s daughter at Sunday School.

  “No, thank you, but it was very kind of you to offer.”

  The door slammed shut.

  After a few moments of composing himself, Sean peeled his back off the door. Watching Ingrid’s room carefully, he turned and walked back down the corridor towards Simon’s.

  “Right,” he muttered to himself, “that’s Plan A fucked, then.”

  ----

  Cherry’s breath turned to mist in front of her. The room had suddenly become so cold that she turned to check she definitely had closed the window behind her.

  She touched the small radiator next to the sink –it was hot. Inches away from it, her fingers felt the bite of the cold again.

  Deciding that sudden, inexplicable cold was not usually a good thing, Cherry had to make a choice. She wanted out of that room. Two options: back out the window and play safe, or open the door and see what and who was on the other side.

  “What the hell,” she decided, “can’t live forever.”

  She crept back to the door and placed her fingers on the handle. Then something unexpected happened.

  The bathroom was about 7 feet by 5 feet. The shower curtain was open, and there was not a cupboard or any type of door to be seen. There was, definitively,
nobody else in the room.

  With this in mind, what Cherry very much wanted to know was: who the hell had just whispered, “Wait,” In her ear?

  ----

  “Right. Let’s fillet the bitch.”

  As always, Harriet’s solution cut to the crux of the matter.

  “You really, really don’t want to try that,” Sean warned her. “I mean, you know, be my guest, but don’t come crawling to me afterwards. In fact, you’ll be lucky if there’s enough of you left to crawl. You’ll probably need to be dragged.”

  “I’m not afraid of that skinny old cow. She could do with a bloody good beating. Might remind her to crack a smile now and again.”

  “No, Harriet, please.” Simon asked. “You haven’t seen her, really. She’s…” he searched for the correct words, “…she’s not right.”

  “That is one fucker of an understatement, mate,” Sean agreed.

  Harriet sat back on the bed. “OK, so what is the plan?”

  “Best thing I can think of is we sneak down to the cells tonight, break Bob out and get him the hell off the island. Can you guys do what you came to do without him?” Sean asked.

  Simon looked at Harriet.

  “Course we can,” she answered. “He’s only here for the jolly.”

  “Right. How tired are you?” he asked Simon.

  Simon realised that, actually, he was very tired. And he hadn’t had a shower since lunchtime.

  “I could sleep,” he answered.

  “OK. Let’s go get some kip. There are only a few guards on overnight downstairs. There’s usually nobody down there, so they don’t tend to guard the cells too hard, you know? I think they change over at 4:00. Our best option is probably to go down there about 3:30 –with any luck they’ll be out cold themselves by then and we can hopefully sneak past them without any confrontation.”

  “Hopefully,” Simon repeated.

  “Well, to be honest mate, this whole plan is pretty dependent on hope. The guard rotas are extremely secret. Nobody outside the guards themselves knows who’s on when. But we might get lucky.”

  ----

  Cherry hadn’t so much felt the breath as felt the absence of air where breath might have been, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand abruptly to attention.

  There was only one explanation: she’d broken into a haunted house. Brilliant.

  “Now,” she heard the voice again. It was creepy, yet somehow reassuring at the same time. So, despite feeling every sinew of her being tell her to get the hell out of this nuthouse, Cherry slowly turned the handle. This time, it made no sound.

  There were no lights on, but someone had lit a fire downstairs. From the glow, she could make out a corridor with three other doors. The two farthest away were closed, but the nearest one, about five feet to her left, was open. The ambient light only penetrated about a foot into the gloom and thereafter it was black.

  She stared intently into the dark. If anyone was in there, she’d be more visible to them the closer she got to the top of the stairs. She held her breath, at the same time trying to focus all her energy on listening for the faintest sound - a shuffling foot or any other sign of life. There was none, except the persistent crackle of the fire and the growing smell of something cooking. Hopefully, that meant that at least one of the two people she expected to find here was in the kitchen and maybe she’d have the chance to catch the woman alone more easily than she expected.

  At the bottom of the stairs, the wall stuck out a few feet before the archway. Theoretically, that meant she could port down to the foot of the stairs and remain hidden, avoiding walking past the open room on the way. If the house was haunted, it was also a damn good bet the stairs were creaky. Then again, maybe just the bathroom was haunted. She’d heard of stranger things. She was a stranger thing.

  At the bottom of the stairs, the glow from the fire was much more intense and, from a mirror on the wall opposite, she could see there was nobody immediately around the corner.

  She took a deep breath and, preparing to jump straight back upstairs if she needed to, leaned forward.

  She retched involuntarily, covering her mouth instinctively and praying she hadn’t made a sound.

  The hearth was cold and black. Next to it, strapped to an armchair, the body of a woman was burning. Her face was turned upwards, permanently held in a grotesque snarl, as if she were cursing the skies.

  “Me,” the voice whispered. “Sorry.”

  “I’m sorry,” Cherry replied, realising that her mission to save this poor woman, whoever she was, had taken too long. Cherry walked across the room and stood in front of the burning carcass, wondering if she could have done anything more and why Maya had been so important that Faunt would send her here. Only when she felt a tear touch her lip did Cherry realise she was crying.

  The cold whipped in again like a winter storm, and the flames flickered violently.

  “Run,” whispered the voice again - urgently this time. “Run!”

  Cherry turned without question and headed for the door. Halfway across the room, her feet stuck to ground, as if she’d stepped in superglue. Her forward motion had the effect of sending her tumbling forwards when her feet stopped moving, painfully jarring both ankles as she landed on her hands, arms outstretched. Instinctively, she tried to stand but, with her feet frozen to the ground, her balance was off. She was stuck. But it was fine, she could just port herself across the room and position herself upright again that way.

  Except she couldn’t. For the first time in her life, Cherry envisaged herself somewhere and found that she was still rooted to the spot. Fear tightened her chest.

  “No, no!” she heard the voice pleading. She had a horrible feeling it wasn’t her it was pleading with.

  “Hola, señorita,” said a voice from behind her.

  She’d assumed the murderer had left, since his victim was clearly dead. She’d never checked the kitchen.

  “Do you know, I thought Faunt might send his teleporter after me. I honestly didn’t know if the immobilising charm would work on a jumper. I am delighted to find that it has.”

  Cherry didn’t answer. She was reeling with panic at losing her ability, like a fish suddenly suffocating in water. And she was bent double at the mercy of a maniac. What the hell had Faunt sent her into?

  She was shocked into focus by the feel of a hand slowly stroking her back, under her top. She could just about see her assailant’s face by the firelight, upside down. It looked weird, and he seemed to be drooling.

  Whatever else he might eventually do, she was not about to let him perv all over her first. Bending her knees as much as she could, Cherry pushed up with all her strength and managed to bring herself jerkily upright, catching her balance, just, as she reached vertical.

  “Keep your fucking hands off me,” she spat over her shoulder.

  The low, guttural “Heh” sounded almost respectful. Mostly, it was terrifying.

  Slowly, he walked around Cherry, stalking her like a spider, and moving almost as silently. Finally, he stopped in front of her.

  By the flickering light of the flames, she could see his face was a mass of scar tissue and his eyes were pale –too pale - as if he hadn’t seen the sun for a long time.

  “It’s something, is it not?” he asked, stroking his hand down his face. “I was a work of art, once. The most lusted after boy in Barcelona. Now, I am this.”

  “You’re doing better than her,” Cherry nodded towards the still burning corpse.

  The man grinned, but it was more like a tear across his face, showing perfect white teeth.

  Cherry felt a sharp pain against her neck. She’d hardly seen him move, but he held a knife against her throat. He took a phone from his pocket with the other hand. She could feel the edge digging in and winced away, but the action nicked her skin. A trickle of blood ran down her neck.

  He replaced the weapon against the wound. It stung. Cherry glowered defiantly at him, despite her growing fears that she was p
robably going to die here, alone.

  “Stand still. I am expecting a call, and I would not want to accidentally cut you.” his tone was viscous. Oily. Evil.

  The phone rang.

  “Hello, Faunt,” he said, putting the phone on loudspeaker. “I seem to have something of yours.”

  “Cherry, I’m so sorry,” her employer’s voice said. “This is my fault.”

  “Of course it’s your fault,” Scarface replied. “You’re a predictable man. I may not have known how to reach you, but I knew how to get your attention…” he flashed that fleshy rip at Cherry again. Bile rose in her throat.

  “You know what I want,” he continued. “Where is he?”

  “You know you deserved it, don’t you? What he did to you?” Faunt answered.

  The Spaniard didn’t answer. In that moment of silence, Cherry heard a faint whisper: “ignite.”

  Ignite what?

  “You have two choices, my friend,” he finally said. “Tell me where he is and I will slit her throat.”

  “I think you mean ‘or’,” Cherry sneered at his mistake.

  “No,” Faunt replied, solemnly, “he doesn’t.”

  “If he does not tell me,” the man continued, addressing Cherry, now, “then I will keep you alive. For a long time.”

  He drew the knife slightly across the cut he’d made earlier and Cherry winced again.

  Another long silence. Again, Cherry heard the whisper, “Ignite.”

  The ghost presumably had a plan to help her, but there was nothing in reach that she could start a fire with. She could just about reach the sideboard to her right, on which were some photos of exotic landscapes and …a candlestick. But no candle. Still, if she could reach that, maybe she could use it as a weapon. At the moment, she couldn’t even move without cutting her own throat.

  “Faunt, mi amigo, we both know what I am going to do to this girl if you do not tell me. However, for her benefit, perhaps I shall run through some of my ideas now.”