Panic

by K. R. Griffiths

  On this particular cold, grey morning, Michael was sitting as usual in one of the town's two 'squad cars', outside his colleague Carl Wilkins' house, waiting for the older man to appear for his ride to work. The engine was running, the heater working overtime to keep the freezing air at bay. Carl, as usual, was late.

  Strictly following protocol, of course, Michael and Carl were each meant to pilot a squad car around the streets, but this seemed unnecessarily wasteful and, in any case, no one from further up the chain of Police command had yet bothered to venture this far into the sticks to check whether their guidelines and advisories were actually being implemented.

  Michael shivered and pushed the heater up to maximum. He hated mornings. Hated the way that each dawn broke the promise of the night before, that tomorrow things might be different. After two years, he still could not adjust to waking up to an empty house, and heavy, unwelcoming silence. Michael's morning routine was always a carefully planned rush, a race against time to get to work that left no room for sitting in that silence, for introspection. Carl's steadfast refusal to exit his house on time was ruining that.

  Michael reached for his phone, intending to fill a minute or so by checking for messages that he knew were not waiting for him, when Carl opened the door and flopped into the car with a dramatic "Brrrrrr." Michael flicked the phone shut, slipping it back into a pocket.

  "Coffee and doughnuts, partner,” Carl said, in a mock Southern-USA drawl that hadn't improved with repetition. Michael forced a grin, and reached for the thermos Carl offered. With their work consisting mainly of giving lifts to drunks and resolving occasional half-hearted disputes between neighbours, Carl had, several months back, begun to narrate their days like a voice-over on some hard-boiled detective movie. It had started as an ironic joke, yet now it was routine, but at least it came with fresh coffee and yesterday's fresh doughnuts each morning. After all, cops are meant to eat doughnuts.

  Michael poured himself a steaming coffee into a small plastic cup, and took a long gulp.

  "How'd it go then mate?"

  Carl grunted by way of response. It was virtually his primary mode of communication. Carl had a grunt for every scenario, probably including a couple Michael didn't like to think about. This one? Displeasure with a hint of resignation.

  "She's still...adamant."

  The faux-accent was gone, replaced by a gruff, well seasoned valley-boy lilt.

  Michael arched an eyebrow. Carl was not noted for his concise vocabulary. The argument must have been a real doozy.

  Carl bit into a doughnut and chewed slowly, grimacing, as though the burst of sugar brought him no pleasure whatsoever. He chewed, as always, like a cow.

  Michael tried to pin down his partner's expression. Thoughtful. Or constipated. Michael plumped for the former, despite his all-too detailed knowledge of Carl's diet.

  "Wants to be nearer the kids." The big man said finally, with an audible swallow. "Told her spending twenty one years in the same house as them was surely enough."

  Michael snorted a laugh.

  "Then she says maybe spending thirty years with me was more than enough."

  Michael chuckled again. Carl's wife, Beth, was a real firecracker. He'd hung out at the Wilkins place often, and rarely left without his ears ringing, usually having been informed by Beth that if he wanted to sort out his life, Michael would have to cheer the hell up, since no one wanted to be with a ‘misery-guts’.

  Beth was forthright, but she was also usually just plain right. It was a killer combination.

  "Then she brings out the big guns. Grandchildren. We'll have 'em soon enough. She wants to be able to see 'em. End of."

  Carl often spoke like this, in bullet points. Michael had long suspected his friend had evolved this mannerism precisely because he was married to Beth. He could only ever get words in edgeways. Had to make them count.

  "Ouch," Michael said sympathetically. "No big guns of your own?"

  "Water pistols, mate." Carl shook his head, forlorn. "She wants me to put in a transfer request to Cardiff. Maybe even Bristol. What the hell would a proper police force want with the likes of me? Can't be that many kittens need rescuing from trees."

  Michael's face cracked in a grin. "True," he said, nodding sombrely. "But on the other hand, kettles don't boil themselves. And there's always filing, and-"

  "Bastard," Carl said with a laugh. "Just talked yourself out of a doughnut."

  Michael laughed.

  "So what are you gonna do, mate? Doesn't sound like Beth's going to budge on this one, eh?"

  Carl shook his head wearily. "When does she ever? I dunno mate. Women."

  He tutted.

  "Better off without them."

  Carl caught Michael's gaze, and suddenly his face dropped. He flushed.

  "Shit, mate, I-"

  Michael put the car in gear, and felt rising dismay at the sudden awkwardness, but having no idea how to defuse it, adopted his default approach: pretend he hadn’t heard. He cleared his throat.

  "Right then, first order of business?" Michael kept his eyes focused on the road.

  "Hell," said Carl. "Let’s swing out by Ralf's. Beth's got this idea that muesli constitutes a proper breakfast. My stomach says otherwise."

  Michael pulled the car away from the kerb, and set off into the unremarkable grey morning.

  *

  The smell of blood mingled with the salty aroma of bacon, filling the small bar area, hanging in the air like a harsh rebuke.

  For Craig Haycock, time seemed to stand still. Heavy and thick, the atmosphere tingled with shock and violence. It felt like the moments before an electrical storm erupted.

  His mouth dropped open, his eyes painfully wide, as though his brain had requested more visual information than it was currently receiving in an attempt to process the bewildering scene. The spell was broken when Leary's fingers unclenched and the head, which Craig now recognised as belonging to the priest’s wife, dropped to the floor with a sickeningly wet thump. Her eyes were open, staring directly at Craig, and he felt as though something in his mind was suddenly being stretched taut, close to snapping.

  Drunk, he thought, as he dropped instinctively into a defensive crouch, backing up as far as the narrow bar allowed.

  The thought was ridiculous. Craig had been drunk before; hell, he’d spent most of the last few years wandering round in a warm stupor, and he'd never come close to decapitating anyone. Still, it was what his beleaguered brain offered up and, for now, he would go with it.

  "Stop right there, Father," he cried, and was unnerved to hear his own voice, high pitched and tremulous. His tone, which he had hoped would be authoritative, was instead plaintive. He sounded like a child begging a stern parent to stay up late.

  Craig's mind reeled: he knew Peter Leary fairly well. He was the man who had performed his wedding ceremony. And that other ceremony, the one that occupied the opposite end of the emotional spectrum. The one he tried not to think about. The priest was a kind man, a man of enviable virtue and patience. Never in a million years would Craig have considered him to be a threat to anyone.

  For a moment his words did seem to have an effect: the priest stopped, swaying a little, as though unsteady on his feet, his head whipping from Ralf to Craig and back again, as if he was struggling to make some terrible decision.

  The fog in Craig's mind lifted a little, and he raced through his options. The priest was a bear of a man: at six foot two he had four inches on Craig, and was probably fifty pounds his superior in weight. He was not carrying any weapon that Craig could see. Leary's hands were empty, stained red with blood, but it was his eyes that truly made Craig's nerves dance uncontrollably. The man's eyes were impossibly wide, the whites a bright, angry red. Blood trickled from them like tears.

  The priest seemed to make up his mind and lurched half a step toward Craig, when Ralf, who had been attempting to inch his way backwards, toward the door at the far end of the bar that led to the café's small stockroom
, nudged the coffee pot on the bar with his ample gut, sending it crashing to the floor. Leary's head whipped toward the noise. The movement was animalistic, like a tiger catching sight of prey moving through the long grass.

  It happened in an instant. The priest pounced like a starving animal, clear across the bar and onto Ralf with a ragged, gurgling roar.

  And bit him. Bit his god-damned nose clean off, tossing the ripped chunk of flesh aside with a flick of his neck, before darting forward again and sinking his teeth into the soft, quivering flesh of Ralf's neck.

  The fat man hit the deck, the priest straddling him in a grim mockery of a lover's embrace. An arterial spray of blood painted the wall red behind them.

  For Craig, autopilot took over. Without thought, he scooped up a bar stool in one smooth motion and swung it like a nine iron into the priest's right flank, sending the big man crashing into the stove, which spat up a griddle's worth of crispy bacon and searing, bubbling fat over the man's head.

  A new smell hit Craig's nostrils, a sweet, sickening fragrance that brought bile to the back of his throat. The priest lay motionless at the base of the stove, his face sizzling.

  Craig shot a glance at Ralf, lying on his back, a bubble of blood and saliva on his lips. Ralf's neck had a tear, perhaps four inches across, from which blood poured at obscene speed. Ralf's eyes were moving, locking onto Craig's gaze with an intense pleading. He looked like a frightened child.

  Craig waved a clearly unnecessary stay put gesture toward Ralf, and turned to see the priest hauling himself unsteadily to his feet.

  The priest’s face was a vision from a demented nightmare, flesh melted away from his skull, partially revealing bone. Both eyes were gone, rendered liquid, oozing down across his cheeks, fusing with the superheated meat that had been his nose and jaw.

  This time Leary sprang forward without hesitation, teeth bared, an inhuman rage-fuelled scream tearing from his lungs, but the attack was blind, and Craig had time to roll to the side, narrowly avoiding the priest's landing.

  As he rolled, Craig's fingers found the shards of Ralf's dropped plate. He tried to stand, intending to brandish the makeshift weapon to deter the priest, but already aware on some level that the move would be futile.

  He didn't get the chance.

  Before Craig had even regained his balance Leary was upon him, strong fingers closing around his neck, forcing him back to the floor. Stars exploded across Craig's vision as the back of his head connected hard with the tiles, and terror threatened to overwhelm him. The priest’s fingers closed like a vice, slowly, inexorably crushing his windpipe.

  He had no other option.

  No time to think.

  He drove the shard of porcelain into the priest’s neck, drove it hard. No self-defence, this; it was a killing blow. He felt warm blood splash onto his hand, and drove further, twisting and tearing with the weapon, oblivious to the pain as sharp edges sliced into his palm.

  After an eternity, the thick fingers on his throat slackened and slipped away. Air exploded into his lungs. Nothing had ever tasted as sweet.

  With a grunt, Craig hauled himself out from beneath the priest's heavy body, painful hacking coughs ripping through his damaged throat. He climbed to his feet using the bar for support, nearly pulling his still-steaming coffee down onto himself in the process. The entire attack had taken less than a minute.

  Turning towards Ralf, he felt his heart sink. The jovial bar owner had been a little slow, but made up for it with a perma-smile and a warm heart. Now, in death, his features were contorted with anguish and pain, his gaze fixed on the ceiling. The flow of blood from the wound in Ralf's neck had slowed to a trickle, a bright red river leading to a vast ocean that spread across the tiles, mingling with the ground-in coffee and ketchup. Ralf's words came back to Craig, suddenly tragic.

  The colour of life, that is.

  It would be the last conscious thought to cross Craig Haycock's mind. Moments later, his focus was entirely taken by his blood, which suddenly felt as if it were boiling in his veins.

  2

  The pace of life in rural South Wales was slow as pouring treacle, but below the surface, where the town was powered by the gasoline of rumour and gossip, things moved at breakneck speed. Information was the town's real currency and its people had all the riches they could wish for. No secret remained kept for long.

  So it was that Mrs Paula Roberts, baker’s wife, proud mother of children long departed for the bright lights and better prospects of London and Birmingham; owner of a mouth that transmitted at broadband speed, came to be walking her dog in the chilly morning air on the day things began to unravel.

  Dogs were messy, dirty animals in Mrs Roberts' opinion, but having relented after months of pestering by her then-teenage son, she soon discovered that they presented an excellent reason for hovering around the gardens of her neighbours. And the gardens of the neighbours were exactly the place to be if you wanted to know what was what and who was who.

  Often she would let the terrier, renamed 'Sniffer' after the kids had flown the coop, due to what Mrs Roberts believed to be an excellent nose for town politics (or at least the gardens in which those politics were discussed) decide on the route of his morning walk.

  This morning he had turned left out of the driveway and it had proved an excellent choice. Eyebrows were raised and mental notes taken as she had walked past the Chapman house and heard a man's laughter drifting from the open bedroom window, for Mrs Roberts knew full well that young Shelly Chapman's husband was away on business. Sniffer got a crunchy treat for that one.

  The rest of the walk proved to be a disappointing affair: mostly quiet houses and empty gardens, the residents of St. Davids opting to stay in the warmth of their beds for as long as possible before their varying responsibilities dragged them out into the cold, misty morning.

  Disappointing, that is, until Sniffer finally led Mrs Roberts past the house at which Father Leary and his wife had lived for the last three decades.

  At this early hour, silence hung over the town, riding the coattails of the sea mist that usually cleared up by mid-morning. And so it was inevitable that Mrs Roberts, whose ears during these walks were alert like wartime radar, heard the odd cry.

  It had come from Father Leary's house, of that there was no question. It wasn't a scream; wasn't a shout of anger. Indeed, Mrs Roberts may well have dismissed it altogether, as the cry of someone who'd dropped their morning toast perhaps, or stubbed a toe climbing out of the bath, were it not for the way the sound ended.

  Abruptly. And with a strange, wet gurgle. A very odd noise. A noise that required further investigation.

  Mrs Roberts had a system for investigating the gardens of her neighbours (everyone in the town was considered a neighbour, no matter how far away they actually lived from her) and it was beautiful in its simplicity: show a treat to Sniffer, take off the mutt's leash, toss the treat as far onto the neighbour in question's property as possible, and let the dog's stomach do the rest.

  As a means of trespassing on the property of other people it was foolproof, so much so that people often thanked Mrs Roberts for coming to pull her dog out of their garden before it decided to start dropping presents on their lawn.

  The noise had come from the rear of the house, no doubt, and so she discreetly hurled a crunchy treat as far down the path to the side of the house as possible and set Sniffer to work. The terrier, eyes wide and focused solely on the bone-shaped treat, flew off down the path, oblivious to half-hearted cries of 'bad dog, Sniffer!'

  After waiting a moment or two, and wearing a look of exasperation for those who may be watching, Mrs Roberts set off after the apparently rogue dog, who was now happily munching his way through the evidence of his master's transgression.

  As she rounded the corner to Father Leary's back garden, she heard the front door slam behind her and turned to see the man himself leave. He was walking oddly — stiffly — and carrying something she couldn't make out before he disappe
ared from view.

  Equally odd was the direction Leary took, turning left, heading away from the town and the Cathedral that served as his home for most of the day.

  Mrs Roberts heaved a dramatic sigh. Her chance to eavesdrop had almost certainly passed, unless Father Leary's wife was prone to talking to herself.

  She leaned down to reattach Sniffer's leash, but the dog squirmed out of her grasp with an excited yelp, and dashed out of sight behind the house.

  Sighing again, Mrs Roberts rounded the corner, and mentally readied her apology to Mrs Leary who would no doubt see her trespassing from the kitchen window.

  And stopped.

  The leash fell to the ground unnoticed as she clasped her hands to her face in horror.

  Sniffer was bounding excitedly around a pool of blood; a dark stain on concrete that steadily mushroomed from the obscene space where Mrs Leary's head had been, the remainder of her body splayed awkwardly across the step in front of the open patio doors.

  The horror of the sight stole away Mrs Roberts' thoughts, leaving her feeling heavy and immobile. This went far beyond gossip.

  This was the mother lode.

  As the shock of the grisly scene in the Leary garden began to subside, the next steps came to the fore. Clearly, Mrs Roberts had to be the one who broke the news to the residents of St. Davids, and so, really, she should be heading toward the tiny police station near the town’s main shopping area. Hopefully, of course, some of the residents would have emerged from their cocoons as she made the journey.

  Mrs Roberts was just mulling over this, when the garden offered up another odd sight that caught her attention. Some distance from the back door, toward the rear of the lawn, was a hole in the grass, fairly deep.

  She walked cautiously over to it, and stared down, intrigued. The hole was an odd shape, perfectly round, and very deep. Had Father Leary killed his wife, planning to bury her under the garden like some character in a soap opera?

  Mrs Roberts pondered this, and all the possible ramifications for the town and its people, for a long while. Lost in thought, she paid no attention to Sniffer, who lapped happily at the spreading pool of blood around Mrs Leary's corpse.