by Lex Sinclair
The shrubs lining the front lawns of Thorburn Close rustled softly in the chilly breeze. Plain-clothed police officers sat in their unmarked vehicles, watching, waiting for something to happen that was out of the ordinary. Or for someone who didn’t look like they belonged in the neighbourhood to appear, practically walking right towards them so they could get to the bottom of this unnerving predicament.
‘This shit just doesn’t make an iota of sense,’ Detective Sark said, thinking aloud, breaking the silence in the Ford.
His partner, Detective Reeves bit into his cheese and onion sandwich, gazing out the driver’s side window at the empty houses surrounding them; their opaque windows reflecting the radiant sunshine. But at night those windows looked and felt like eyes staring at them, condemning them for letting another day go by, still no sign of their rightful owners arriving to bring life back to the red-brick buildings that had been the venue to barbeques, birthday celebrations, parties, Christmas dinners and other jovial celebrations all year round.
A crow sailed down from the heavens, perched atop a chimney stack, scanned the lifeless street below, cawed... then took flight again. Sark couldn’t decide whether or not the crow was cawing with approval of the eerie quietness or not. He knew it wasn’t important. Yet he was so suspicious of every minute sight or sound, it danced around his conscious until it before he went out of his mind.
For Detective Sark it was the sitting on his arse waiting for something unusual to happen that drove him to the edge of sanity. It had always been his Achilles’ heel. Patience was not a virtue he would ever possess.
While he was sitting idly in the passenger seat, praying for a break, he could be doing something productive. However, there was no evidence of any kind. He’d been through each and every house, searching for handprints, blood, or any clue that would help them in their investigation. But not even the crime scene detectives could find anything, save vacant homes and cars deserted either on their driveways or parked in their garages. No people, dead or alive anywhere in the vicinity.
Sark wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or bad thing.
His mother had always told him - when he was still living under her roof - that no news was good news. And, although in everyday life that statement was accurate, Sark would rather have an injured person or a blood smear, anything to give them a start into the investigation; instead of going to all the missing persons’ relatives homes, questioning them for hours on end, being told the same thing over and over; that the relatives knew as much as the police did - nothing.
***
Cathy Sheldon swam to the surface of consciousness; her vision blurred and hazy. It took her three attempts to blink away her weariness, and for her eyesight to regain its focus. Then, and only then, did she see the timber joists overhead in the dimness enveloping her.
She moaned softly, weakly, when she tried to move. Her body felt numb from head-to-toe. She hadn’t fallen or bashed herself to her knowledge, but she couldn’t be sure at this moment in time. Nothing made sense to her any more. All she knew was that her peaceful, mundane life had been destroyed by the intruders, who had brought her to wherever the hell she was, and had temporarily put her in an unconscious state.
Where was Paul? What had those strangers done to him? Was he still alive? If not, would she also die in an unspeakable fashion? Or were they being kidnapped for ransom.
Lying there listening to her breathing and seeing her chest rise and fall at a quicker rate than normal, in the cold damp barn - where, she didn’t know - scared Cathy more than she ever thought possible. She thought this was the kind of ordeal you read about in horror books and newspapers, or watched on the television... not in real life.
Evidently, Cathy was wrong.
A man’s ear-piercing scream jolted her and sent a nasty shock through her drumming heart. If Cathy was scared before hearing that shriek of pure agony she wouldn’t dare imagine, now she was terrified beyond her wits, because that scream had to have emitted from her husband, Paul. She had never heard him scream in all the years she’d known him and been married to him. He was her rock; her knight and shining armour. Nothing hurt Paul, or if it did she had never seen him expressing grief and sorrow.
Now he was screaming over and over again, whimpering, snivelling, sobbing, and pleading with the punishers something incomprehensible through his constant blubbering. That was followed by another shriek of sheer pain.
‘STOP! STOP! STOP! Please, God... stop!’ The voice that cried those words was definitely her Paul. He was begging for his life, begging for the pain to cease and to be granted his freedom from this venue of Hell.
Cathy opened her dry mouth, peeling her lips apart and tried to cry out so Paul could hear her. Perhaps if he did, he’d gain strength, knowing she was still alive. Or maybe it would only make things worse for him by prolonging the agony he had already endured thus far. In spite of risking her own life and her husband’s, Cathy tried to shout her husband’s name, but found she had no voice. She tried numerous times, eventually surrendering, realising it was no use.
A guttural scream was cut off abruptly, followed by an eerie, foreboding silence that was far more frightening than hearing her husband’s torture on the other side of the darkened barn.
The silence spoke volumes, echoing in Cathy’s eardrums, informing her instincts that her husband breathed no more. For the darkness that enveloped him now was for ever. And if she didn’t get off her back and flee the barn, she too, would also meet death sooner than her intended life expectancy.
For Paul’s sake as well as her own, she had to get up and escape, so she could tell the authorities what had happened.
Clenching her frozen hands into taut fists, then tensing her arms and legs, she willed herself to sit upright, like she’d done the night the intruders broke into her home and destroyed her tranquillity - but this simple task was proving to be so arduous she wasn’t sure she could do it. They must have given her a sedative to incapacitate her muscles, so there was no chance of her moving while they were busying themselves torturing Paul. But drugged or not, Cathy grimaced and fought with her mind over her unwilling body to get off the hardwood table and to a vertical base.
Amazingly, she managed to achieve this goal, gritting her teeth, grunting as quietly as possible, doing her utmost to be discreet so not to attract unwanted attention. However, when she rolled off the timber surface onto her feet, her knees buckled, causing her to stagger forward in the direction of the two nine foot doors that were ajar, letting in a sliver of white light from the half-crest moon outside. She steadied herself with a trembling hand to keep her from falling down; not only would that make a curious noise, but it would also seriously jeopardise her escape.
In her peripheral vision, Cathy saw her shimmering shadow on the wall, created by the flickering candles from somewhere behind her, where she daren’t look. As she got closer to the barn doors her shadow grew larger and disproportionate, until it became a black veil covering her only exit towards any hope of salvation.
Cathy was within a few feet from sidling through the gap in the doors when a hooded, faceless figure stepped out of the shadows, instantly blocking her escape.
Cathy gasped!
The figure before her stood, unmoving. Its face a white, ghostly blur, like that of a broken cloud, losing its puffiness and finally dissipating in a clear blue sky. The figure did not reach out to grab her, did not speak to her - and from what Cathy absorbed of that precise moment - it did not appear to breathe, either. Although, that might have been merely her terror exaggerating the facts into the supernatural of those in shock which could be felt in the victim’s marrow, it was so deep and resounding.
Cathy whirled around, clasping a hand over her mouth, cutting off her scream of alarm at the four hooded figures without faces, wearing robes to conceal the rest of their anatomies.
When s
he darted out of their way as they grew within touching distance, her feet crossed one another, inadvertently tripping herself up. The hay-covered ground rushed up to meet her face. The impact knocked her senseless, but even in her dazed state of mind, she knew that falling over and whacking her head hard had cost her life. There was no escaping this terrifying faction, who either wore the most horrific masks ever created, or were more likely something not of this world. Something far more sinister than her disorientated mind could conjure.
She groaned, louder this time, feeling her cranium thudding the unyielding surface, her head buried in the hay. Then she was lifted off the ground where she lay - not by a fierce grip - but by a force that made her define gravity, carrying her over to the timber workman’s bench where she had lain for how long she had no idea.
Her body slowly, gently, descended into its previous position.
Cathy considered resisting, thrashing about on the table, arms and legs lashing out at this malevolent faction that held her captive, but the impact from her fall, not to mention the terror that caused her heart to beat like a jackhammer informed her it would be prudent just to let the inevitable occur, rather than fight against them and make it worse on herself.
For a few brief seconds, she really believed that she’d escaped to the outside, where she would’ve run at roughly the speed of an Olympic athlete sprinting to the finish line to flee the barn and to find solace at the nearest police station. It wouldn’t bother her that they thought she was crazy as hell. It wouldn’t matter if they locked her up in an asylum. It wouldn’t matter that she’d be chained to her bed at night and was watched vigilantly 24/7; nothing would matter, just as long as she didn’t have to see or suffer any more harm.
But that wasn’t her destiny, so it would seem. Instead she found herself shaking, teeth chattering, her body going through vicious spasms; her muscles contracting so hard and fast that it literally rocked her from side to side. The only thing preventing her from falling off the side of the table were the disturbing, featureless hooded shapes, looming over her, studying her, on the verge of a colossal panic attack.
Cathy’s protruding eyes moved swiftly to one figure to the next, seeking any kind of emotion behind their ghostly facades. Or were they incapable of expressing emotions? she wondered, incoherently.
She turned her head so that the right hand side of her jaw came to rest on her collar bone. The flickering candlelight created amorphous images on the walls. One of those images bouncing on the orange-lit wall was that of a lifeless form in the shape of a person lying down with folds of skin from the abdomen peeled back, overlapping the sides along with perfectly aligned bones that had to be someone’s ribcage. She couldn’t be sure of this, as she wasn’t actually seeing it... only a shadow. Nonetheless, it looked as though the lifeless form belonged to her deceased husband who had his ribcage snapped then pried open, enabling access to his exposed innards.
Cathy quivered and whimpered simultaneously when she felt her head being carefully turned so that it looked straight up at the figures again. This time, however, one of the hooded murderers had stepped forward into her immediate vision, claiming her devoted attention. Once this was achieved, the figure raised his hands to its head, reaching into the hood that shrouded its head, then slid it back, removing the ghostly mask and revealed its true identity.
If she could have screamed, Cathy would have. Instead her heart climbed into her throat and all that escaped was a throaty sharp intake of breath, understanding why they wore those creepy masks. Because, as frightening as those masks were, they were not as terrifying as the skeleton features that were otherwise hidden.
Tissue still clung to the skull, but had lost its original colour due to decay, and the dark brown eyes that glimmered in the candlelight were further back than a living, breathing person. Blood rushed through the invisible veins returning life to the fluxing face beneath the hood that was both horrifying, yet hypnotic at the same time. Cathy could actually see more and more fibres intertwining, sheathing the whiteness of the skull in a dark red layer.
She wondered why her thudding heart had not yet exploded inside her chest.
The hooded figure with a half-formed face spoke in a raspy, deathlike voice. ‘Fear not us but death. For we have suffered more than you will ever know. Death is whispering to you, but you are not listening. You cannot hear what death is telling you, but soon you will hear everything. Death is not suffering. Death is bliss. You may not want death but death wants you, wrapped in its arms... for ever.’
The evil, supernatural being rested its hand atop her chest... then dug its long, sharp talons into her, piercing the pale flesh, ripping it apart with minimal effort.
Then the high-pitched screaming at the back of Cathy’s throat began...
2.
Michael Gibson woke up at the shrill sound of the alarm clock going off. That god-awful sound could wake the dead, he thought, as he turned it off and got out of bed.
After doing his routine stretches for his chest, back and legs, Michael crossed the room, opened the bedroom door to the landing and padded into the bathroom to brush his teeth and have a nice hot shower before heading downstairs to make himself some breakfast.
Weighing two-hundred and twenty pounds of granite muscle due to lifting heavy free weights ever since he was a teenager had given Michael a big appetite to fill his massive frame. He could barely fit through the narrow doorway into the kitchen because of his broad, cannonball shoulders. If he got any bigger he would have to sidle into each room. Just thinking about that prospect brought a broad grin to Michael’s face. He envisioned construction workers building wider doorways specifically for guys like him, who were so big they had to have their own separate accommodations.
Unfortunately, his bodybuilder physique was too intimidating for his last girlfriend, who ended their relationship, due to the fact that Michael’s strict high-protein diet apparently came before everything else, even her. And yet there were other people, who would admire him, or scarper in the opposite direction, or gawk at him, envious of his physique.
Shirley had been one of those people who scarped, in spite of the fact that once you got to know Michael, you’d realise you were making a fuss over nothing, because he was a great big softy, with a big heart, who never used steroids or growth hormone, or had even been tempted. His jaw-dropping superhero body was as natural as the forty shades of grass.
Michael devoured his Frosties and gulped down his meal replacement milkshake, then sauntered into the living room, sat down in his armchair and watched the morning news.
A young, attractive female reporter with a long dark mane of hair and accentuated cheekbones looked directly at the camera pointed at her and spoke clearly into the microphone.
‘... still unclear as to what has actually occurred here at Thorburn Close; although one thing is certain - the street is empty of its residents. This Amelia Jenkins reporting for BBC Wales news.’
Thorburn Close? That’s just down the road. What the hell has happened, now?
Michael got up from his comfortable armchair, not wanting to relax and let his food settle before going into the garage to workout any more. Catching that snippet of news had ruined his morning... and he knew that even if he did lift some weights this morning, his mind wouldn’t be totally focused.
He went over to the living room window, opened the curtains, letting the sunlight pour inside, giving life to the interior. Then he watched for any activity on the street outside. Michael was hoping he would see one of his neighbours emerge from their homes so he could discuss what he’d just seen. With a bit of luck he could find out what bad thing had taken place just down the road, for Thorburn Close to make the news headlines.
The door to number 3 opened. Emma Harris - Jake’s wife - walked up her path, dragging the bin outside to leave on the pavement for the rubbish men to empty into the back of their
disposal truck tomorrow morning.
Emma was dressed in an expensive pin-striped suit that exuded an elegant appearance and made her look even more attractive than when Michael saw her in her usual faded jeans and blouse. He hurried to the door, mindless to the fact that he was only wearing shorts, opened it and stepped outside into the sunlight.
‘Emma!’ he called, loud enough so she could hear him as she made her way to her Mercedes.
She whirled around, frowning, and a little alarmed at whoever yelled her name, startling her. Then when she saw it was Mike, she smiled; then frowned again when she saw him crossing his front lawn in only his briefs.
‘Have you seen the news?’ he asked.
Emma shook her head. ‘No. Why?’
‘Something’s happened at Thorburn Close.’
Emma had to avert her gaze from Michael’s sculpted physique with slabs of muscle she didn’t know existed, not to mention the impressive bulge in his pants.
‘What’re you talkin’ about?’
‘I don’t know exactly. But there was a news reporter speaking live this morning, just down the road where Thorburn Close is, saying that it was deserted. I didn’t catch it all.’
‘I haven’t heard anything, I’m afraid,’ Emma replied.
Michael realised he was stopping her from getting into her car and driving to work downtown. He raised his hand in a goodbye gesture, turned and headed back inside, feeling ridiculous at his behaviour and what Emma must be thinking as she reversed her silver Mercedes onto the street, put it into first gear and rolled to the junction before joining the road leading out of the suburbs.