The Wilds

by Kit Tinsley

  ‘Mr Morgan,’ she said. ‘I know you’ve been living in the city for some time and may have forgotten, but you see and hear a lot of unusual things living out in the country. Eventually you stop paying any attention to them.’

  Karl was about to respond when he heard a howl from inside the house. It sound like a cry of frustration or pain, it was followed by a loud thud. Karl jumped at the sound. He spun around on his heel and looked at the house. Then he turned back to Mrs Pritchard. She looked uncomfortable.

  ‘What was that?’ Karl asked.

  ‘Oh, that’s just my son,’ she said. ‘He had an accident last night, and he’s in quite a bit of pain. I’ll just go and check on him. Would you mind waiting here Mr Morgan? I won’t be a few minutes.’

  Karl supposed an injured son could explain her unease, but it seemed more than that to him. He nodded.

  ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘Could you ask him if he’s seen anything unusual?’

  ‘I will,’ she said. ‘He’s probably in too much pain to be any help at the moment.’

  She walked off towards the house. As he watched her go inside, Karl felt a chill despite the sunshine. He wasn’t sure what, but he knew something was very wrong at the Pritchard Farm. He wished he had stayed waiting outside his mother’s house for Jason. He regretted coming out here alone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Jason was sat pressing the tissue to his swelling lip when the interview room door opened. Holly walked in first. She offered Jason a sly wink as she came through the door, her little way of telling him that everything was going to be alright.

  Pearce followed her in a few seconds later. He looked a little sheepish as he came into the room. He had his head bowed, this was not the figure of authority that he had always known. The Detective Chief Inspector, who once upon a time had been Jason’s favourite uncle, stepped towards him.

  ‘Okay, Jason, you’re free to go,’ he said, still looking to the ground.’

  ‘What?’ Jason couldn’t believe his ears.

  ‘We’re not going to be charging you. It’s quite clear you had nothing to do with these disappearances.’ Pearce said, he looked up but still couldn’t bring himself to look Jason in the eyes, instead he gazed around the room. ‘If you want to press charges against me for striking you, then please talk to Brody on the front desk on your way out. I won’t deny it.’

  For most of his adult life, certainly most of his career at the chronicle, Jason had been waiting for Pearce to do something he could lose his job over. He never expected that Pearce would offer him the opportunity to end his career without a fight. If Jason reported what Pearce had done, and he admitted it, he would almost certainly get fired, and probably face criminal charges.

  For so long the man stood in front of him had been the enemy. Pearce had been a figure of hate. He represented all that was wrong with the world in Jason’s eyes. He was a bully, and he was not beyond falsifying evidence for a conviction.

  Now , though, with Pearce giving him this chance to finally put an end to it all, Jason found he couldn’t. Pearce had his flaws, and could be a vicious bastard, but he wasn’t a bad man. All the stories he had written about the good things Pearce had done over the years came flooding back into his mind, as well as memories of how he had worshipped him as a child.

  ‘No,’ Jason said finally. ‘If I was going to report you to anyon,e Jon, it would be my Mum. She’d kill you for hitting me like that.’

  Pearce finally looked Jason in the eyes. He was trying to read what Jason was thinking. He was looking for the angle. Jason understood that Pearce distrusted him as much as he distrusted Pearce.

  ‘I thought you would take any opportunity you got to ruin my career?’ Pearce said.

  ‘So did I,’ Jason said nodding. ‘Thing is there’s something far worse than you out there, Jon, and it needs to be stopped. We think it lives somewhere near the Pritchard Farm. Karl Morgan is probably out there already looking for it. Could you give me a ride down there?’

  Pearce looks concerned.

  ‘The Pritchard Farm?’ he asks.

  Jason looked to Holly, she seemed as confused by Pearce’s reaction as he was.

  ‘Yes,’ Jason said. ‘Out on Maltham Lane.’

  ‘I know where it is,’ Pearce snapped. ‘Shit! Why didn’t you say something sooner? Booth, go and get the car.’

  Holly looked at him for a few seconds.

  ‘Now!’ he shouted.

  Holly left the room in a hurry.

  ‘Come on. Let’s get your things from the custody suite.’

  Karl stood by his car for a long time. He had listened intently after Mrs Pritchard had entered the house. There were no further howls of pain and no more thuds, but he still felt uneasy. When he had spoken to Mrs Pritchard the day before, she had left him feeling warm and at ease, like a friendly old grandmother. Today, though, something in her demeanour had changed; he could not put his finger on it. The friendliness was still there, but it seemed somehow strained and false.

  There was a smell, too, around where he was parked. It made him think of hospitals. He had looked for the source of the smell and it seemed to be coming from the ground itself. Why would anyone disinfect a gravel driveway?

  Karl jumped at the sensation of his phone vibrating in his pocket. He really was on edge. He pulled the phone out and saw that it was Jason finally calling him back.

  ‘Hello?’ he said as he answered the phone.

  There was a disjointed and crackling response from the phone.

  ‘Hello?’ Jason?’ he tried again.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ he heard his friend say on the other end.

  ‘Yes. I hear you now,’ Karl said. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Long story, mate,’ Jason replied. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Still at the Pritchard Farm’ Karl replied.

  ‘Okay, I’m on my way,’ Jason said. ‘Is Tim there?’

  Tim. Since arriving and speaking to Mrs Pritchard, Karl had completely forgotten about Tim. The young man should have been there ages ago.

  ‘No,’ Karl answered. ‘I’ll try calling him in a minute. Hurry up , though, Jason, something’s not right here.’

  ‘We’re on our way just be...’ The call was cut off. Karl looked at his phone and saw that he still had a signal. It must have been Jason that lost his. This was often the case when driving along the country lanes, mobile signals came and went at random.

  He wondered who Jason was bringing with him? He had said ‘we’, but was not with Tim. Once more remembering the young man, Karl searched his phone book for Tim number. He pressed the green button and it dialed.

  For a few seconds he didn’t even notice it over the sound of the ringing tone in his ear, but slowly he began to register he could hear a familiar tune. The theme from Tetris was playing somewhere nearby, the sound was faint and unmistakable. Karl remembered where he had last heard that piece of music; it was as they were leaving the marsh the previous day. It was Tim’s ringtone.

  Karl followed the sound, it was coming from the other side of the courtyard, away from the house. The sound suddenly stopped as Tim’s mobile went to answer phone. Karl quickly ended the call and redialed. He waited for the call to connect and then listened for the music. When it started up, he followed it to the large double doors of an old brick built barn.

  The doors were wooden. The paint on them was peeling, but they looked strong and in good order. The music seemed to be coming from inside the barn. Karl put his ear to the door and became certain that Tim’s phone was inside. This close to the door he noticed the smell. It was a thick and sickly stench. He had never smelt anything like it before. The nearest thing he could liken it too was an infection he had got in a cut on his leg in childhood. The yellowish brown pus that had leaked from that cut had been the most foul smelling thing he had encountered, until he stood in front of that barn.

  He knocked gently on the barn door, not wanting to attract the attention of Mrs Pritchard,
or her son in the house.

  ‘Tim?’ he half whispered. ‘Tim? Are you in there?’

  There was no reply.

  Karl braced himself, knowing that he had to open the door. He pulled the bar, that held the door shut, off and set it against the wall. Slowly he opened the door. The smell hit him even harder as the door creaked in his hands. The stench was now almost overpowering, It took all of his will power not to stop. He knew that something that smelled that bad could never be good.

  The few windows scattered around the barn had been painted over with black paint. This meant that the only light he could see by was that coming from the door he was opening. The contrast of the bright sunlight outside and the dimness within the barn meant it took a few seconds for his vision to adjust. The horror he saw in the barn revealed itself to him slowly, fading into his vision.

  The concrete floor of the barn was stained all over with what was obviously pools of blood. They ranged in freshness from still red puddles, to dry brown stains. Against every wall were stacked human remains. In some places they were stacked at least four deep. There must have been nearly fifty bodies with the uncountable body parts. Arms, legs, torsos, heads, hands and feet all piled up, with no way of telling who they belonged too.

  Some of the bodies were decayed almost to the point of mummification, while others were still fresh enough to look almost alive. Every stage of the degradation of the human form between these points was on display in that barn. Bodies dripped unimaginable green liquids as the flash began to slide, and as maggots gorged themselves on the corruption.

  There was a pile that was just bones, virtually gnawed clean. The smell and the sight was too much for Karl, he doubled over and the contents of his stomach were ejected onto the bloodstained floor.

  He saw Tim off to the left. The young man had been mutilated beyond belief. His face was perfectly intact, but it looked like his entire torso had been hollowed out like a human jack’o’lantern.

  He fumbled in his pocket for his phone. He wanted to call the police, but his fingers wouldn’t work and as he pulled the phone from his pocket it slipped from his grasp and slid across the floor, almost to the other side.

  He followed it, and was about to pick it up when he saw something that stopped him in his tracks. There, staring at him with dead eyes, stacked in between to other corpses, was the body of his older brother.

  ‘Phil!’ he screamed and dropped to his knees.

  He had known that he was dead; he had become certain of that, but coming face to face with his part eaten body was too much for him to take. He screamed, a horrific vocalisation of emotional pain to rival any of the physical kind. He pounded the concrete floor with his fists unable to do anything but cry out in anguish.

  ‘Quite a mess, isn’t it?’ Mrs Pritchard’s voice came from behind him. He turned to see her stood there in the doorway. ‘He gets so upset when I try to throw out any of his things , though.’

  Karl saw the full horror of this. Not only did she know what was going on, she was protecting the animal.

  ‘You’ve been keeping it as a pet haven’t you?’ he screamed at her. ‘A man eating big cat, and you’ve been covering up for it all of these years!’

  Mrs Pritchard laughed and shook her head.

  ‘Just like that idiot Altman,’ she said, pointing across the room. ‘Obsessed with big cats.’

  Karl followed the line of her finger and saw the ravaged body of Altman propped on a pile, recognisable only by his trademark yellow sweater.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Karl said.

  ‘He’s not a cat , though,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ Karl was too far in shock to manage anything else.

  ‘He’s my son,’ she said. ‘They called him the cat boy in the circus, because of his deformities. My husband and I were cursed with children who were malformed, Mr Morgan. Miko was the youngest, the only one I still have.’

  She turned back to the door and looked back at the house.

  ‘Miko!’ she shouted, then she turned back to Karl. ‘What was I supposed to do, Mr Morgan? Turn him in? I brought him into this world, I raised him, I could forgive him anything. Even when he killed my husband.’

  Karl heard a low growl and then a nightmare made flesh walked into the barn. it was clear that he was human, but never before had Karl seen such an abomination of the human form. Miko, as Mrs Pritchard called him, stood well over six foot tall. His waist was wretchedly small, yet his upper body of chest and shoulders seemed disproportionately large; they rippled with taut, twisted muscle. His thighs seemed larger than seemed natural, especially against his slender legs. His body was coated in a mass of coarse, black hair that could be easily mistaken for fur.

  His face, though, was where the worst deformities lay. His ears grew large and misshapen out of his rounded head. His chin came to a point below a mouth that seemed too large for his face. As it looked at him, Karl saw the large jagged teeth the mouth contained. These were not fangs, but human teeth that had broken into points from years of biting into bone.

  Miko had a hair lip that had never been treated properly, it caused a scar that ran from the septum of his pudgy nose all the way to his mouth, splitting the top of his lip. It was this, combined with his large, almond shaped, milky eyes, that most strikingly gave him the appearance of a cat.

  His hands contained barely formed, stumpy fingers, that were topped off with this pointed nails, they had the appearance of paws.

  There were bandages on his upper arms and shoulders, this must have been where he was injured.

  ‘Goodbye, Mr Morgan’ Mrs Pritchard said with rueful tone.

  Karl was not waiting around to see what happened next. He set off running and barged past them. Neither Mrs Pritchard or Miko had seemed to expect this reaction. They both looked shocked as he set ran towards the woods.

  ‘Get him, Miko!’ Mrs Pritchard yelled.

  Karl turned back and saw Miko drop down onto all fours, making him even more feline, he gave chase at a speed Karl could not hope to match.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  The car virtually flew down Maltham Lane. Jason, sat in the centre seat at the back, wished had had listened to the advice to do up his seatbelt as Pearce threw the car around the bends. Jason was sent crashing sideways, his head connecting with the glass of the window with a thud.

  ‘Shit,’ he said as he sat back up.

  Holly looked back at him with a disapproving look.

  ‘For God’s sake, strap yourself in.’

  He grabbed the waist belt in the centre seat and pulled it around himself it fastened with a satisfying click.

  ‘Hurry up,’ Jason said.

  ‘We’re nearly there,’ Pearce said, his eyes fixed intently on the road ahead.

  ‘I hope we’re in time,’ Jason said.

  Pearce turned to Holly

  ‘If things get out of hand there,’ he said to her, ‘only use your gun to protect Jason and yourself, and keep well back.’

  Holly looked offended, she was well trained in the situations, and one of the bests marksmen in her class.

  ‘I’m more than capable of looking after myself, sir,’ she said.

  ‘I know you are,’ Pearce said. ‘But what you told me earlier changes everything, all right?’

  She couldn’t argue with that, and silently nodded her agreement.

  Jason was confused. He felt out of the loop once more.

  ‘What does he mean?’ he asked her.

  ‘Nothing important,’ Pearce said before she could answer.

  Miko was gaining on Karl, how he could run so fast on all fours was astounding. If it wasn’t for the bandaged wound on his shoulder, which appeared to be slowing him down, he would have caught Karl by now. The other advantage Miko had was this was his home, Karl was on unfamiliar ground. He just hoped he could make it into the tree line, then perhaps find somewhere to hide.

  He ran past a heap of rusting farm machinery, piled up against the side of a corrugated
iron shed. There was a large spanner sat on top of what looked like part of a plough. Karl snatched the tool up, it’s weight was reassuring in his hand. He could see that Miko was catching him up, his only hope was to try and slow this monstrosity down.

  Karl pulled his arm back and used all of his strength to throw the spanner at the advancing killer. The tool flew through the air, spinning as it went. The throw was better than he could have hoped. The spanner collided with Miko, hitting him on the side of his misshapen head with an audible thump. Miko let out a yelp of pain, more animal than human, and dropped to the ground.

  Karl saw Mrs Pritchard appear around the corner; the old lady had followed them at a much steadier pace. She looked and saw her monstrous child laying on the floor.

  ‘Miko!’ she screamed in despair and began running towards him.

  Karl stood there watching the scene unfold. He was unsure what to do next.

  Mrs Pritchard reached Milo’s crumpled body, she bent down and put her fingers to his neck to check for a pulse. Her response gave Karl no indication of whether the man/monster was dead. She did not scream out in anguish at the loss of her child, nor did she show any sign of great relief. She merely got up and ran off, back towards the house.

  Karl knew that he needed to get out of there, but found himself stood waiting to see what happened next.

  Miko twitched. He was alive. Karl watched as the cat like man slowly raised his head. He shook it as though trying to wake up from a deep sleep. Karl saw where the tool had hit him, it was just above Milo’s left eye. The spanner had torn into the flesh and a deep cut was pouring a steady flow of blood down his deformed face. He lifted one of his paw like hands to the wound. He flinched in pain as he touched it. He looked at the blood the covered him pour from the wound, and then looked into Karl’s eyes. Miko’s face twisted into a grimace of pain and anger and he let out and almighty roar and jumped to his feet.

  ‘Oh fuck,’ Karl said, he set of running without a seconds hesitation.