A Home by the Sea (A Supernatural Suspense Novel)

by Saunders, Craig

  ‘You OK to take first watch?’ asked Marc, yawning.

  ‘Still perky, Sarge,’ said David with a tight smile, trying to hide the fact that his front tooth had just dropped onto the carpet before he could swallow it.

  ‘Kiss?’

  ‘Haven’t brushed my teeth, honey,’ said David. ‘Kisses in the morning.’

  ‘OK. Wake me up when you’re tired,’ said Marc.

  David blew him a kiss and settled in for the wait. He would have to hold it in, hold in that murderous rage, until Marc began snoring. It wouldn’t be long. He knew Marc was a heavy sleeper, because he inhabited not just David’s body, but David’s mind, too.

  That was why the change had never worked, back in the early days, in the Black Room. Because of the eyes. The eyes were where the mind resided, truly the window to the soul. Inhabiting a dead shell never did work – he’d never managed to transmute a soul until he fed a man the eyes of a black man he’d killed.

  Fuck, but he got a shock when that blue eyed man opened his brown eyes and screamed.

  But Franklin had learned since then.

  He’d learned plenty.

  *

  Marc lay down on the bed, worrying about David, who didn’t seem right. He laid there for a long time, looking up at the ceiling, worrying about David, about Irene, about the man Franklin, who was coming back, as Irene said. Coming back.

  He turned in bed. The bed, iron, had old fashioned springs below that squeaked and squealed every time he turned. He must be making enough noise to wake the dead. He worried about waking Irene and Sam, sleeping upstairs. Maybe Irene, too, was tossing and turning just as he was.

  He turned his mind back to Franklin. Could the dead come back to life? Of course they couldn’t, he thought. But that was the problem, wasn’t it? Because Irene didn’t have any enemies.

  It had to be someone that Franklin had befriended in prison.

  But it didn’t feel right.

  He remembered that dead, rotten smell.

  Like someone had crawled out of the grave, and no matter how hard his intellect fought it, he felt it was true. Franklin was coming back.

  Coming back as what?

  He didn’t know. He didn’t care. He felt the blade of the kitchen knife in his hand, somehow frightening yet with a comforting simplicity.

  He turned on his side again and put it under his pillow, though, because he didn’t want to scratch his face in the night and end up taking his eye out or cutting off his ear.

  He thought about the mannequin, and its place in all this. He thought about that awful smell, and then thought for a moment how much like that smell David’s farts, all night, had been.

  He worried about that for a while, too, but then he fell asleep, on his back, and began snoring.

  *

  The house was dark as David listened to Marc turning and the bed squealing for what seemed like forever, but then the noise of the bed ceased and Marc’s heavy snoring came from upstairs. He itched to go straight to Irene and Sam, to take what he really wanted, what he needed, but there was no way this fucking body would last.

  He needed Marc, first, and Irene and Sam second. Once he’d killed Irene, then Sam would be his for the taking.

  His own blood, at last. His last chance at a body he could take, he could live in. He’d have to teach Sam, let him learn, let him mature enough to live a life...but he could do that in the Black Room.

  He could bring him up, make him strong...and when the time was right, whatever vessel he was in at the time, he would cut himself open and feed himself to his nephew.

  He smiled a grim smile as he stalked up the stairs, the rot moving fast, now, maybe too fast.

  With his canopic jar – his mannequin – he could make a vessel last for weeks on end. Without it, his rot accelerated until it was dangerous for him. Dangerous, because if the decay was too fast, he would become a putrefied mess on the floor, his muscles and tendons beyond use. He would waste away, unable to move, unable to kill and take a new body.

  Every moment longer that he stayed this far from the mannequin was perilous.

  His body, already rotten on the inside, felt the urgency.

  That urgency translated into swift footsteps up the stairs. Urgent, but trying to be quiet, he stalked along the landing on the second floor, on the outside of the floor boards, near the wall, where the floorboards were less likely to creak. He stood outside the door, watching the man on the bed, fully clothed, staring up at the ceiling, sleeping with his eyes closed.

  Time would be short, and Franklin knew he’d have to move quickly now. He knelt, his leg popping as the ligaments in his knee gave way. He didn’t feel the pain, because really, this body was dead already.

  He took out his tools from under the bed. The tape, the rope.

  He slapped the tape over Marc’s mouth and Marc tried to sit up, but David, Franklin, smashed a fist into Marc’s solar plexus and the fight went out of him immediately.

  Something popped in Franklin’s elbow with the force of the punch, but still he smiled his gap-toothed smile, because it wouldn’t be much longer now.

  Not much longer at all.

  ‘Try to make another noise and I’ll leave you here while I cut up Irene,’ he said, and wound the tape around Marc’s hands. Once he was in Marc it would be simple enough to sit up and cut off the bindings.

  Marc’s eyes were wide with terror, and shock, and then, yes, understanding.

  Then David, or Franklin, knocked Marc out cold with a fierce, well-aimed punch to the temple.

  Then took the knife he’d brought to his own flesh. He dragged the knife down, performing a classic Y-incision on his own torso.

  He felt no pain. But as he cracked his sternum with the meat tenderiser he had brought with him, he was worried about the noise.

  Rushing now, he pulled himself apart, pulled off the tape over Marc’s mouth, and began to feed his unconscious husband the essence of himself.

  He held his hand over Marc’s nose while he fed bite sized morsels into the unconscious man’s mouth. The reflex to swallow or choke was natural.

  Of course, he left his eyes until last, and in the end, it turned out nice and easy.

  *

  Irene moaned in her sleep while Marc became Franklin. For a second, on the cusp of waking, she thought she heard something, but she didn’t want to stir, because it was a beautiful dream. She didn’t want to let go. Instead of reaching out at the sound, something she found frightening even through the veil of sleep, she pulled herself further down under, into the sweet dream...the dream where her boy was still alive.

  *

  Jonathan took his mother’s hand again.

  He was still a toddler, but for some reason, in this dream, she didn’t question it. She didn’t feel the need to question it. It was what it was, and it was a good dream. It was sweet and her heart leapt at the sight of her beautiful boy, as he would have been.

  He had unruly hair, a blonde thatch, like hers, not like Paul’s.

  He pulled her up from her bed and with a hard face that didn’t fit his cute features, he drew her onward, out through her door (she didn’t need to move the chair from underneath the door handle, because this was a dream) and down the stairs. She followed, smiling down at the back of his head. He didn’t look at her any more, but pulled her down, urgency in his walk, like a little boy eager to show his mother something exciting, like a new secret place.

  He took her downstairs and showed her such sights.

  She couldn’t see anything but David, leaning over Marc on the bed. Marc thrashed for a second, then he was still.

  For a moment, just a fleeting thought, Irene thought she had stumbled upon Marc and David in an intimate act. But then she saw the truth of it.

  David’s body fell to the floor and she could see that his chest was cracked open, his insides were gone. He was a hollowed out, grotesque shell.

  She didn’t know much about physiology of people, when it came to the inside
s of a person, but she understood well enough that parts were missing.

  And his eye sockets were a bloodied raw mess.

  Marc sat up on the bed and for a second she didn’t see Marc, she saw Franklin. She remembered the Black Room, as the papers had called it, and knew now what it was that Franklin had been doing...

  And had, somehow, succeeded.

  It should be impossible, but there was no doubt. In the dream Irene understood fully that David and Marc were gone. Franklin had used them up.

  Her best friends.

  She could cry, but you can’t cry in a dream. You can watch, you can run, you can cry for help, but no tears come in dreams.

  Marc, but not Marc, took a knife from David’s dead hand and cut out his husband’s eyes. He looked at them, in his palm, smiling, licking his lips, like he was about to eat them.

  He turned his face up and seemed to be pointing at Jonathan.

  ‘You want them, kid?’

  She felt Jonathan’s nod, some tremor running through her hand, and Jonathan reached out and took the eyes.

  ‘No!’ she shouted, ‘No!’ but it was too late. Her boy was eating the eyes, then he turned to her and his face, too, was Franklin’s.

  ‘It’ll come to pass,’ said Marc, no longer Franklin. Jonathan, with Franklin’s features, nodded too.

  ‘It’ll come to pass,’ he agreed, through a mouthful of eyeball. ‘If you don’t wake...’

  Irene couldn’t cry for her dead friends and her lost son. She could scream, and she did. She didn’t want to dream anymore, not this dream. She wanted to wake, wanted to wake, wanted to wake...

  *

  She woke with a scream and knew he was coming. She heard his footsteps, heavy and fast, on the wooden floors.

  She didn’t waste time doubting her dream. Her knights weren’t coming.

  Franklin. No doubt in her mind. Marc and David were dead, but she couldn’t even think about that, because now everything was about Sam. She understood what he wanted him for, instinctively, and because it was obvious.

  Franklin, in anyone’s body, could have killed Sam anytime he wanted. He didn’t want Sam dead.

  He wanted him alive.

  A sob escaped her throat and she held out her arm, knife in hand. Her hand shook. The door burst open and Franklin was in the room.

  He had a knife of his own. Only it wasn’t a knife, it was a cleaver.

  *

  ‘Is that it? All the fucking effort I’ve put in, and all you could come up with is that shitty knife?’

  ‘Fuck you, Franklin.’

  ‘So you know?’

  ‘I’ll kill you.’

  ‘I’m already dead,’ he laughed.

  ‘I’ll keep killing you ‘til it sticks, then,’ she said with more force than she felt. Her bladder had already let go. She felt weak, impossibly weak. Her knees shook and her hand shook.

  But this was the man that had terrorised her, killed her husband. Wanted her son.

  The hand that held the knife became steady. Her teeth cracked as she bit down. No more talking.

  ‘You can’t win, bitch,’ he said. ‘I killed your two queer boy buddies. This body’ll last a little longer.’

  ‘Because of the mannequin.’

  ‘My little canopic jar, if you will.’

  She didn’t care. She didn’t know what that was, but she could guess. Some piece of him was inside the mannequin. She remembered the thump thump thump she’d heard.

  ‘Your heart?’

  ‘Bingo, bitch. Bingo.’

  ‘I’ll burn it.’

  He laughed again.

  ‘Finished?’

  She shook her head. ‘You’re not taking him.’

  ‘Let me show you something,’ he said. He put his hand, his left, against the door jamb. Swung with the cleaver and the tips of two of his fingers tumbled to the floor.

  He grinned at her and showed her the stumps. There was hardly any blood. Because the heart in Marc’s body wasn’t beating. Marc was dead, and Franklin was just riding him.

  ‘You understand you can’t hurt me,’ he said.

  She sobbed, again, but then gritted her teeth against the terror and frustration, because now she understood that she really couldn’t do anything against him.

  He would take her son. Make him...him.

  There was no way past him. No way she could beat him with the little knife she had, especially when she couldn’t hurt him. He was already dead.

  She threw the knife at him instead. Threw it as hard as she could and wished her aim to be true.

  *

  The knife stuck in his shoulder. He didn’t bother to take it out. Just laughed.

  ‘I practised this, Irene, honeybunch. I practised. I’m dead, but all I’ve got to do is take another body. Can’t take yours...men don’t fit into women. Don’t kid yourself. I know you want me inside you again. Tied up. Remember that? Man, you came so hard when I put my hands around your neck. But I don’t think I’m up to the task now, eh?’

  ‘Fuck you. Just fuck off.’ She ground her teeth against tears of despair, but what could she do?

  Kill yourself?

  She didn’t like that voice.

  Kill Sam?

  She liked that voice even less, because that sounded like the old her. The one that had let Franklin degrade her, make her hate herself until Paul made her whole again.

  Terror rose up in her but she weighed it down with anger, let the sea take it.

  Let the sea take it, said a different voice, and this one sounded like Paul.

  She liked that voice, but she didn’t understand.

  She turned her head, because it wasn’t Paul’s voice. It was...

  Jonathan was floating outside her window.

  He held his hand out for her. Trust me, he seemed to be saying. Trust me.

  She understood what he wanted her to do. Understood, even though the words weren’t there. Kind of like telepathy, on a basic, childish level. Just images.

  She understood.

  There was no other way.

  She looked at Sam on the bed. His face puckered, ready for a scream. Like he knew what she had to do.

  She stood at the foot of the bed. Maybe eight feet between her and Franklin. Franklin grinned.

  He knew she couldn’t win. He’d take pleasure in cutting her up.

  She turned and looked one last time at the window. Jonathan still floated there, holding out his hand.

  Franklin couldn’t see her other son, Sam’s twin.

  She could. For a second she closed her eyes, steeling herself for the pain. Hoping against hope that Jonathan’s spirit was real enough not to lead her to her death.

  She had nothing but blind faith to go on.

  But she had more, didn’t she? She had the love of her dead son, in whom a part of Paul’s spirit lived on, too.

  Before she could let her fear overrule her, she ran to Jonathan and gave her life over to him, let him take her, as she flew smashing through the window and out, three floors down with glass falling all around her.

  *

  Part Three

  The Black Room

  Paul hung in the Black Room, thinking, you think that’s the worst I’ve ever done?

  The Black Room was thick with dried blood, piss, shit, maybe some kind of fluid from stomachs, like bile or acid. Pieces of people. That was difficult to think about.

  Think of Irene, he told himself. But thinking, too, that he wasn’t going to get out of this alive.

  Don’t kid yourself, Paul. You know you’re not getting out alive.

  He knew because after looking around the room a hundred times while he’d been captive, his eyes kept returning to the man hanging from a hook opposite him. The man was drugged. A bag hung from a pole with a drip feeding him something which kept him sedated or alive. Paul wasn’t sure which. There was only one back. He figured it couldn’t be both.

  Maybe the pain and despair kept the man sedated. Maybe he was in some kind of
coma.

  The man hung by hooks through his flesh, holding him upright, though his head sagged against his chest. Paul thought the man was going to suffocate under the weight of his own head if he didn’t get help soon. And he wasn’t going to get help. Help wasn’t coming. He knew that just as well as he knew he was dead himself.

  Paul didn’t know how long the man had hung from those hooks, but the blood was crusted, and below him there was an old pool of urine and some faeces mingled in with the blood.

  The only indication he lived was the gentle rising of his chest and the snuffling sound that accompanied each breath, almost like a snore, but more laboured.

  Other people hung from the ceiling, too. Parts of people, husks, people in various states of mutilation.

  Two women’s bodies hung down, hooks through what remained of their flesh, where it had not been flayed from their muscles. One of the women’s hands had been removed. Perhaps, Paul thought, she had fought back. Perhaps it was just another part of Franklin’s psychosis. Maybe he had some aversion to her fingernail polish. Maybe she smelled of cats.

  Once, Franklin had practised on cats.

  Now, he was practising on people.

  Practising for what, Paul didn’t know.

  But you’re about to find out.

  When Paul first woke he thought maybe the sight would drive him crazy, but it had been two days now, dozing, waking, seeing the dead and mutilated and the poor man hanging from the hooks.

  He wasn’t going crazy.

  He was past that, right the way through it, into some kind of hypersanity. He remembered everything that ever happened to him, remembered feelings, smells. Even just the memory of the things he’d smelled in his life was strong enough to obscure the rankness of the room, this black room with old blood splashed across the walls, the floor, the ceiling.

  ‘Hey,’ he said again. His voice cracked as he said it, dry. He tried to work some moisture into his mouth.