‘Hey!’
The man continued to hang, unresponsive. If anything, his breathing became even more laboured.
Paul wanted to throw something at the man, but he couldn’t, because he too hung from hooks in the ceiling that pierced deep into his flesh, and the only movement he could manage was a gentle sway that ignited pure agony in every part of him.
Those hooks held him fast while he waited for Franklin’s return.
*
Irene looked up at the dawning sky, dull oranges and bright blues and deep purples fading off to the west. It didn’t make sense to her. When she’d died, throwing herself through a window, it had been night.
The moon was still in the sky, low. A crescent moon, but ethereal in the light of the rising sun. It would have been a warm and clear autumn’s day if she wasn’t dead.
Jonathan leaned over her, his hand on her face, and she knew she was dead because she could feel him like she could in dreams. Sam was gone and she was dead and the afterlife fucking hurt.
But being dead wouldn’t hurt, would it? Would it?
Her back hurt, her legs, her arms. God, her head hurt so badly she couldn’t move.
‘I’m paralysed?’ she asked Jonathan. The toddler shook his head.
‘No,’ he said, short and sharp, like a child just learning to talk, ‘no’ being one of his first words. He pronounced it more like ‘naoh’.
He understood her perfectly. A child of his age, just able to say no, wouldn’t know what death was. This Jonathan, this dream child, understood far more than his apparent age, even if he could only speak the speech of a toddler.
But, then, Irene reasoned, if she wasn’t dead, she was paralysed, surely. She tried to lift her hand, but couldn’t move it.
A hot, burning thought passed through her head. Sam was gone. She pushed it down, somewhere under the surface of her thoughts, where she could cope with it.
She knew Sam wasn’t dead. But she also understood the horrors in store for him. She’d identified Paul’s corpse. She knew full well what Franklin was capable of. She knew what he planned.
She couldn’t move, but she could cry.
She cried and her head would not move. Her tears ran down her face, along the hollow of her temples, and into her hair. She could feel the tears. She could feel the pain of losing Paul, and the memory of what Franklin had done to him. The fresh pain, still, of killing her baby that she would have named Jonathan, and pain like a knife in her insides, knowing that Franklin, dead Franklin, now had her one surviving baby. Marc and David, too – gone. Her only family in the whole world was Sam. Her only reason for living.
‘I can’t move,’ she told Jonathan. Her tears ran on. She cried in despair.
But if she was paralysed, why did she hurt so fucking much?
‘No,’ he said. ‘Naoh’
‘He’s got Sam.’
Jonathan nodded, a sad look on his face.
‘Can you help me?’ she said.
Her son pursed his lips in what was a surprisingly adult expression. He nodded again, like he could say no, but not yes, though he understood the concept and all her words.
He didn’t try to help her up, but kissed her on the cheek. Then he thrust his clumsy, still babyish hands through her flesh and into her neck. Those baby fingers passed through her flesh like something solid, though her son was nothing more than her imagination, maybe a ghost, but as fragile as smoke. The pain she could have wished away, but then her son would be gone and she wanted him here. The agony she felt might get her living son back.
She bore the pain and the breathlessness while he felt around within her neck. Then, with an audible crack, louder for Irene as it travelled up through her bones into her head, her neck returned to its correct place. It felt as though he’d just pushed her vertebrae into the correct place.
She slammed her teeth shut against the scream that wanted to come out when she felt that crack and the ability to move once again. Her limbs jerked, once, as the bundle of nerves in her slipped disk settled.
The pain she thought she’d felt awoke afresh. Agony. Pure hell. Everything hurt so badly. She wriggled her toes, her fingers, and found that she could move just fine, though God, it hurt to do so.
It didn’t matter how much she hurt. She had to get moving.
It was daylight already.
Maybe she was afraid he would come back.
But then Jonathan thrust his hand into her chest and squeezed and this time she did scream, because she felt her heart kick and beginning beating with that thump thump that she’d come to loath, and she understood why Franklin hadn’t cut her up, why he’d left her where she was.
He’d left her because she’d been dead.
Jonathan nodded, as if to confirm it, though she hadn’t said anything aloud. She didn’t need to speak to him. He was dead and he felt her.
Irene bit down against the pain as she tested out an arm, a leg, and found that nothing had been broken. She wondered if she’d somehow slipped a disk in her neck when she fell, cut off the circulation to her brain. There was no point in trying to figure out how she’d died. She was back, and Sam was waiting.
Could she do it? Could she get up, now Jonathan had given her the gift of life, even though she’d robbed him of his through her stupidity?
She raised both arms. There was blood on her right arm. Sand was in the wound, yellow grits deep inside her flesh. It would fester if it wasn’t cleaned. But she didn’t have time.
The wound on her arm was jagged, and as she sat up she saw how much she’d bled into the sand...until she’d died. She remembered holding it before her face as she leapt through the window on the third floor. She looked up at the shattered window.
Felt her face. There were wounds on her face. Her shirt, a simple blue cotton work-a-day thing, was torn, and there were deep wounds on her shoulder and down her back. One calf, too, had been cut by the glass. Glass and shards of wood from the sash windows littered the sand around her, like she’d been making angels at Christmas, only in broken glass.
She knew her life was a gift. It was impossible to imagine what it had cost her son to give it to her, because she’d been dead a hundred times over, from breaking her neck, to the fall, to the blood loss.
Any one of those things should have made her weak and useless, but somehow Jonathan’s touch invigorated her. The knowledge that it wasn’t over leant her strength...and her rage, too.
Yes, she thought, holding that rage inside. Anger, pure and simple, because that sick fucker had her baby.
‘Thank you, darling boy,’ she told Jonathan. He smiled, pleased. ‘Let’s go.’
But Jonathan shook his head.
You’re on your own, he seemed to be saying.
‘No, baby...don’t...don’t go...’
But already he was fading. She felt tears welling up again and this time she swallowed them. She didn’t have time to cry for Jonathan or David or Marc.
Franklin would be taking Sam to the Black Room and she had work to do before she could follow down the long road to the bastard’s final death.
*
The hooks through Paul’s flesh didn’t hurt anymore. He hung, remembering. Not reminiscing, which seemed like a pleasant way to remember, but remembering his fingers inside a cat.
As a young boy he remembered putting his fingers into the cat and touching it somewhere inside. Maybe it had been the cat’s spine, or some nerve bunch. He’d touched it and it had danced and Franklin had laughed, but he’d been complicit, hadn’t he?
He was complicit, still.
It was all his fault. He could see that now. He could still feel terror, though he was too far gone into his hypersanity to feel it on the surface, but it was his fault and he didn’t doubt the terror or the blame that lay with him.
Complicity. One time, any one time, if he’d have stood and been a man none of this would have happened.
You were but a boy, a voice said. He didn’t know to whom the voice belonged, b
ut it sounded just like his own.
Some part of him understood that as much as he told himself he wasn’t insane with fear, he couldn’t deny it when he heard footsteps above. Of course it was Franklin.
He remembered the cat. His fingers in the cat.
You think that’s the worst I’ve ever done?
A hatch, like into a basement, opened above. Paul understood where he was. Where he’d been for the past two days.
In his old house, in the fens, Cambridgeshire.
Somewhere new, under the house, that hadn’t been there when their Dad was alive, when they’d both grown up together. Franklin had built the Black Room for his experiments, and he’d got better with practice.
Just how much, Paul was about to find out.
‘Franklin! You fuck!’ he said when Franklin’s foot hit the first rung of the ladder leading down. He thought he roared, but his voice was cracked and the words came out as a mere whisper.
The agony from the hooks was too much for him. Even the effort of trying to shout tore more blood from him.
Don’t pass out, he told himself, but already the lightness in his head was too much, then he was gone for a time.
*
There was no magic bullet to kill the dead. Irene knew this as she packed. She packed some baby things, because she also knew, completely and without a shadow of a doubt, that whatever happened she was coming home with her baby.
She wouldn’t let Franklin take Sam. Turn him into himself, whatever the fuck he was doing. Sam was hers and not his, never would be. And she’d never let Franklin inhabit Sam to destroy him like he had David, and then Marc.
At the thought of her two dead friends – the best friends she’d ever had, a small sob escaped her lips. She punched the door jamb to wake herself up, because crying would send her rage to sleep and let her sorrow rise up, then she’d lose.
She embraced the fresh pain and smiled. The smile would have been terrifying, had there been anyone to see it. Blood on her teeth, on her lips, a wound that still seeped in her scalp.
Irene swallowed the smile because she didn’t like the way it felt on her lips. She needed the anger, but not too far. She strove for control and found it, somewhere deep down where her well of strength flowed.
She didn’t go into the guest room, because she understood that the vision Jonathan had shown her was real. She didn’t need to see David’s mutilated corpse to know that it was true.
She didn’t need to build on her anger. Already it was bubbling, running into her well, and it was rising.
But she needed to stay calm, for now.
‘Slow down,’ she counselled herself as she changed into fresh clothes. She couldn’t do what she needed to in the torn and bloody clothes she’d died in. She was born anew now, and it felt fitting to put on fresh, clean clothes over the ragged mess of her body. That way, she could cover the worst of her wounds. She didn’t want any questions. She didn’t want any kindly passerby to offer her aid.
What she needed to do, she could do alone. She needed to do it alone. This was between her and Franklin and she alone could finish it, because nobody else would understand. Nobody else could understand, that she had entrusted her child’s life to her dead child...to Sam’s brother.
So, instead of seeing David, and falling apart, she forced herself out of the house into the sea air. The air hit her and something washed away instantly. Her face relaxed and she let out a sigh.
‘You can do this,’ she said. ‘Give me strength,’ she added, but this time talking to the sea and not herself.
Then she nodded, set, and went into the small storage cabin around the front of the house. She took three things only.
A lighter Paul had hidden in a toolbox back when he’d pretended he didn’t still smoke.
She took, too, a can of fuel.
Knives might be useless against the creature that now inhabited Marc’s body. Maybe a gun, even if she’d had one, might be wasted. But if she burned him to death there’d be nothing he could do about coming back.
God help him, she’d burn him to cinders.
Just in case, though, she took a 5 kilo sledgehammer, too. Heavy, but not so heavy she couldn’t swing it.
Even a corpse couldn’t do much with two broken legs. Least, that’s what she figured. If it came down to it, though, she’d rather burn him and be sure.
She understood perfectly what it would take to get Sam back. No reasoning. Nothing mortal. No worrying about the police, or legality, or talking.
She had to slaughter Franklin and make sure he could never come back. She needed to destroy him utterly.
With one last look at the sea, she took a deep breath and held that crisp pure smell in her memory for later. She thought she might need it.
‘I’ll be back,’ she told the sea. Tell it to the sea, she thought. But she’d save that for later, when Sam was home.
She’d beat him. She didn’t doubt it for a second, because she was a mother, and Sam was hers.
*
Irene opened the door to the boathouse, the old damp wood creaking as she slid the doors aside.
Marc’s boat was gone.
Hers was in the sea.
She didn’t scream, cry, swear. She just nodded. Of course it would be. Franklin didn’t make mistakes, but this time he had, because he’d thought she was dead, and her son, Sam’s brother, his twin, had brought her back to life.
She turned away from the boathouse and walked along the sand, along the point, along the spit, toward the mainland and Marc’s car...but of course, Marc’s car would be gone. But she’d find it and with it she’d find Sam.
She knew he wasn’t dead.
She’d find Franklin, too. He’d made a mistake. Like he’d made with Paul. He’d left her alive.
*
Paul came around slowly, like a man swimming up through the murky waters of a deep sleep. Franklin sat cross legged on the floor before him, looking up at him, a sick smile on his face.
‘Feel any different?’ he asked, grinning.
‘Fuck you,’ said Paul, though his voice was barely above a whisper. There was a disgusting taste on his tongue.
‘The reflex to swallow when confronted with suffocation is as strong as the reflex to gag, you know. If you can’t gag, that is. I held your mouth shut. I held your nose shut. You were unconscious. It’s been more difficult in the past.’
‘What...?’
Franklin flicked his head to the left. The door was to Franklin’s right, to the left was the corpse. The man who’d been hanging was eviscerated. His eyes were gone, with nothing but bloody sockets left.
‘What...?’ croaked Paul, but he understood perfectly well.
His gag reflex worked just fine then.
‘You sick...you sick fucker. I’m going to kill you.’
‘No, Paul. I’m going to kill you, then I’m going to feed you to someone else. You see...’
‘Fuck you!’
‘No, Paul, fuck you. You took my girlfriend. You remember? She was mine.’
‘You’re sick, Frank. I can help...’
‘I’m not sick. I’m a...scientist. You’ll be my latest experiment. Immortality, Paul. Immortality.’
‘I’ll kill you.’
‘You won’t do a fucking thing! You understand? You’re food, you...dippy...you’re fucking food! I’m so close, Paul. Don’t you get it? So close. You’ll live on in another body. I can do it!’
Frank’s eyes burned with insanity. Paul tried to sick it up, sick it out, the parts of the body he’d been forced to eat, but he couldn’t. He was too dry. He imagined Frank feeding him small morsels, rubbing his throat like when they used to get their cat to eat his worming tablets, before Frank killed it.
Of course, Paul remembered it all now...Mr. George’s cat. Their cat. The missing dogs. The spate of horse mutilations...
How many animals?
How many people?
How many people, Paul? How many people because you’d been
too scared to say anything? Too fucking afraid, and now you’re paying for it with your life.
‘I’m going to have to leave you. Just for a short time. I need another subject. I’ll be back. You see, I’m going to try to feed you to Irene. Seems poetic, somehow. I don’t think it’ll work, because men into women doesn’t seem to take...’
‘You bastard...’
‘I’ll be back. Be a good boy, dippy. I’ll be back.’
That little thing, that pet name, was the goad Paul needed, not the thought of Irene, but the thought of the innocence Frank had stolen so long ago. The thought of his own part in this, knowing Frank was sick and never doing anything about it.
Frank pushed himself up and turned to go and Paul’s rage and terror and yes, his shame, ignited.
*
With his lips curled back in a snarl that split his lips bloody, Paul swung himself up just as Franklin turned his back. With a dry scream he willed himself through the agony, forward, and then back, then forward, like on a child’s swing. On the way forward the next time he tore the hooks from his flesh, taking off his first and second knuckles from each hand, and the fingers. His weight, swinging, tore the hooks from the meat of his back, his thighs, his calves. Blood splashed from his hands across the room.
Franklin swung back around... ‘Fuck...!’ he shouted and punched Paul in the face, breaking his nose and his cheek, as he was falling. Franklin was fast, much faster than Paul.
But Paul could see everything now, now that he was through insanity and out the other side.
He could see he was dead. He’d known he was dead but for his heartbeat the first time he woke in this nightmare pit.
But Irene wasn’t dead. She wouldn’t be. He wouldn’t let it happen. He was dead, but he’d make his death count. He’d make sure she lived. She had to live. She had to...
And so did his children.
Franklin aimed a kick at Paul’s ruined legs, but Paul threw himself into an embrace, the only thing he could do, and bit into Franklin’s neck. Franklin’s hold loosed and his hand went to his throat. Then Paul elbowed him in the face and heard a loud wet crack. Maybe Franklin’s own cheekbones snapping under the force.
A Home by the Sea (A Supernatural Suspense Novel) Page 10