SEED: A Novel of Horror and Suspense

by Matt Shaw

  Chapter Eight

  Mark was up and dressed before Becky had even stirred when morning did finally break. He had even found the time to make the necessary phone call to work. The hospital was still running tests. Thankfully, it was Chris who’d answered the office phone again. It saved the trouble of having to explain everything again to someone else and he knew that Chris wouldn’t ask many questions even if he did doubt he was being told the truth. He did, however, mention that cut backs were starting to take place. A few people had already been called into the boss’ office and made redundant. This is a bad time was all Chris could say about the situation Mark found himself in. Mark didn’t care though. He’d given his all to that company and if they felt they needed to let him go because of a family emergency then so be it. He’d cross that bridge if and when it even happens.

  With the phone call made, Mark sat downstairs in the kitchen - on one of the metal bar stools next to the breakfast area. In front of him were an untouched bowl of cereal and a (now) luke-warm cup of milky tea. He had no idea why he’d poured himself either the drink of the cereal. Eating was the last thing on his mind. Instead, his mind was fixated with getting Becky to the police station so she could get the interview out of the way. He figured, with that done, they could start planning on moving forward with their life. Start thinking about whether she wanted therapy for what’d happened. Maybe even think about a holiday - somewhere hot with a nice beach. Just get away for a while. Let the warm weather and relaxed atmosphere take away some of the stress. He knew it wouldn’t fix things but he figured it couldn’t hurt. They could both do with recharging their batteries a little. Sure, there wasn’t really a lot of money in their savings but - given the circumstances - he figured he could just put it on the credit card. Worry about the financial implications later. The digital clock on the oven changed to ten o’clock. Now was an acceptable time to wake her up. He realised she hadn’t had the best night’s sleep but neither had he and they had things to do. The sooner they got on with things, the sooner they could start to put it all behind her. He turned around and jumped when he saw Becky standing in the kitchen doorway.

  “I didn’t hear you,” he said. She was standing there, in her dressing gown, with her hair all over the place. She looked as though she could’ve continued sleeping given half the chance. “How are you feeling?” he asked. A stupid question if ever there was one.

  “I don’t want to go to the police station,” she said - ignoring his question.

  “What?”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can. I’ll be with you.”

  “We shouldn’t have spoken to them yesterday.”

  “He’s still out there. As of now, he has gotten away with what he put you through. Do you want that? Do you want him to carry on living his life without a care in the world? Maybe even forcing himself on others too? Like you?”

  “He took my driving licence!” Becky suddenly blurted out. Her words silenced Mark and they both stood there, for a brief moment, in silence.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He said that if I told anyone, he’d come to where I lived and kill my family. He said he could find me before they’d find him.” She looked as though she wanted to cry again but she forced back the tears.

  “He threatened your family after raping you - and you don’t think this is a guy who needs to be brought to justice?”

  “That’s not the point!” she said,her voice louder as though she’d suddenly just found it. “If we tell the police more information - give his description...He might come here. He might come to our home.”

  “All the more reason to talk to the police! Let him come here! Let him try and hurt us! I’ll be ready. I want him to come here. I welcome it. I’ll even leave the front door open!” Mark felt his rage burning up within him again. Slowly building with no real control over it. The thought of the man daring to threaten the life of not only his wife but also himself, pushing him to the edge and re-awakening the want to hurt him. He noticed the concerned look on Becky’s face and tried to bring it down a level or two - realising his actions and anger weren’t helping either of them. “Look, we’ll go to the police, we’ll talk to them. Let them know what the man said and that he has your licence. We need to. I mean, what is to say he won’t come by here anyway? Even if you haven’t told anyone? Maybe for a second go?” He realised his words were nothing more than scaremongering and, even then, harsher than they needed to be. As soon as they escaped his mouth he felt cruel for planting the thought in her mind. She’d already been through enough and didn’t need him making it worse for her but enough was enough. This man needed to be caught. Sooner, rather than later. He continued in an effort to try and take a little bit of the worry from her mind (which he had put there in the first place), “If they think there’s a chance he’ll come here - they’ll place some officers outside. Keep watch on the place. Not only was he probably bluffing but, even if he wasn’t, he’d see the police cars outside and run in the opposite direction. Or, if he is really stupid, he’ll get himself caught. Either way - it’s a win.” He paused whilst he let the words of (little) comfort sink in her mind. “We need to do this.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  He smiled a slight smile of relief. It was far from over but getting her to the police station was the first step to slowly putting things right and that was as good a place as any to start.

  “Okay?”

  “Yes. I’ll go and get changed.” She didn’t say anything else. She didn’t move in for a hug. She just turned and walked from the room. Mark nodded to himself at a ‘job well done’ and settled back on the bar stool to wait for Becky to come back down.

  * * * * *

  The kitchen door, which lead onto the garden, opened slowly. There was a brief pause as the person, on the other side of it, waited to see if an alarm would be triggered. No alarm sounded. At least none that they could hear. They knew they’d have a little time before police were alerted to the break-in (and that was presuming the house was even protected with an alarm system in the first place). The intruder could relax, temporarily. There was no alarm system. And, even if there had been, Mark would have kept it off especially for this late night visitation. He didn’t want the two of them to be interrupted before he could do what needed to be done.

  A black booted foot came in first. Muddy. Mark, on the other side of the kitchen, wondered whether it was mud from their garden or residue mud from the park following that night. He put it from his mind. Now isn’t the time to focus on such trivial matters. He tightened his grip around the kitchen knife firmly held in his left hand and braced himself. Just a few more seconds. The intruder, all in black with his face masked over, entered the house. Before the intruder had a chance to get his bearings, Mark screamed and charged at him. The man jumped and turned but had little time for anything else as Mark penetrated his stomach with the business end of the knife. A grunt omitted from his mouth as Mark continued to ram forward with the blade, a violent twist of his wrist to ensure the hole wouldn’t be able to heal over again when he was ready to remove the blade. The man dropped to his knees. Mark kept the knife firmly in his gut.

  “Now!” he screamed.

  Becky entered the room and flicked the light switch on. Before the intruder could react or even turn his head to see what was happening, she hit him with a frying pan. He fell to the side, helped by Mark, unconscious.

  It wasn’t long before the intruder opened his eyes. He was still on the kitchen floor where he had originally landed. The only difference was that his mask was off, revealing the same ugly face that had looked upon Becky when he raped her, and his trousers were around his ankles. For a moment, Mark panicked that Becky had hit him too hard and he wasn’t going to regain consciousness. In their quick planning, of what they wanted to do, they didn’t factor that as a possibility. They both breathed a sigh of relief when he did come round. They wanted him dead but that would have been too easy.

  The m
an gasped. He was trying to say something but the words wouldn’t come out. Either he’d lost too much blood from the hole in his gut, still filled with a knife to stem the flow enough to stop him from bleeding out too quickly, or the hit on the head had really taken its toll. Mark presumed he’d be trying to find out why his trousers were around his ankles and his pants were halfway down his legs. Mark smiled when he noticed the look in the dirty bastard’s eyes: fixated upon the scissors in Becky’s hand.

  “You know what’s coming, don’t you?” Mark asked. The man tried to say something. Mark wondered whether Becky had been trying to say something when the sick fuck was sticking it in her. He turned to his wife who was standing by his side with a satisfied look upon her face. She hadn’t taken a lot of convincing to go with this plan. In fact, this part was all down to her. “You’d better make it quick if you want to get everything done. I’m not sure how much time he’ll have in him.”

  “Please. Don’t!” The man struggled with the words as he realised what was about to come.

  Becky ignored him. She leaned down, scissors in hand, and took a hold of the man’s deflated penis. She smiled as she put it between the blades of the scissors. Mark turned away. He was fine with what was to come but, as a man, he couldn’t watch this. A second later and he heard the scissors clamp shut and the man scream a truly agonising scream of pain. Mark didn’t want to turn around but couldn’t help doing so - now the initial cut was made, he wanted to see the look on the man’s face -nearly as much as Becky wanted to see it. Becky wasn’t done with the rapist though. She rolled him onto his front where immediately the blood began to pool underneath his body - across the tiles of the kitchen floor - and picked the man’s penis up from where it had landed.

  “You’re not...,” Mark’s eyes grew wide with fascination. He knew what her intentions were despite not discussing this stage of the plan.

  Becky laughed as she tried to push the man’s own shrivelled penis into his rectum. It wasn’t to be, though. It was too soft. She took it out and threw it to the side before taking a hold of the scissors again. She muttered something about thinking twice about raping anyone in the future before violently stabbing into the intruder’s backside with the scissors’ blade. The man screamed as Mark just stood there watching. Even he was surprised how far his wife was taking things - not that he minded. The man was getting exactly what he deserved.

  * * * * *

  “What are you doing?” Becky asked. She was standing in the kitchen doorway watching Mark making stabbing motions with the kitchen scissors. He realised she was watching and put the scissors down.

  “Ready?” he asked, changing the subject. She was dressed in jeans and a tee shirt with a cardigan. Casual yet, despite the sleepless night, still pretty. No doubt helped by the fact she had plastered on layers of make-up to disguise the rings around the eyes. Perks of being a woman. Mark just had to make do with how he looked and - today - he looked like Hell.

  “I feel sick,” she said.

  “Just nerves.”

  Chapter Nine

  The ambulance turned into the drop-off area at the hospital, leaving Detective Andrews no choice but to drive on to the nearby car park to try and find a parking space. At this time of night it wouldn’t be too much of a problem as visiting hours were long since over and the friends and relatives of the staying guests would have gone home.

  He didn’t so much as park his car but abandon it instead, driving nose first into the first available spot he chanced upon and slamming on the brakes. The car skidded to a halt - helped by hitting the barrier in front of it (thankfully, for Andrews, not quite hard enough to do any real damage to his car, not that he cared at this particular moment). He jumped from the car, slammed the door shut and hurried towards the Accident and Emergency department without stopping long enough to lock his vehicle. There was nothing worth stealing in there anyway.

  He hurried across the car park and into the Accident and Emergency’s reception.

  “Rebecca Stephens - where did they take her?”

  “Are you family?” the receptionist asked. She turned to her computer and put in the patient’s name when Andrews flashed his police badge from his coat pocket. No notes on the system yet - unsurprisingly - so the red-haired receptionist picked up the telephone to make a call. Andrews turned to look at the rest of the patients, waiting to see doctors and nurses, in the waiting area. The usual crowd you’d find in casualty at this time of night - mostly made up of drunks who’ve tripped and hurt themselves or got into fights with other equally-inebriated clubbers. He remembered his days, all those years ago, when he worked as a bobby on the beat. It was his job removing these dicks from the public, charging them with drunk and disorderly charges or encouraging them to go home before getting themselves charged. Easier days to what he was used to seeing now but as equally frustrating. Sometimes he wished he could just close his front door and never venture out of his house again but, despite not wishing to see anymore atrocities as witnessed tonight, even that was an option he struggled with. There were too many memories in that damned place. He should have taken the chance to sell up and find somewhere else to live when he took the time away from work.

  “Excuse me?” the pretty red-head called out to him. He turned to face her. “They’ve taken her straight into theatre. If you’d like to take a seat they’ll let you know as soon as she is out.”

  Detective Andrews thanked the receptionist. He wanted to know how likely it was that Rebecca was going to pull through but he knew she wouldn’t have the answer. Even if she were one of the ones doing the operation, she still wouldn’t have wanted to commit to an answer anyway. Just in case something went wrong. The worst thing you could do, in this profession, was promise someone that a patient was out of the woods now. It was like tempting fate. Begging for something to go wrong. You promised they’d be fine, the distraught relatives would shout when the news was broken to them.

  Andrews sat down on one of the empty chairs against the wall. He never liked sitting out in the open - whether it was in a restaurant, pub or (in this case) a waiting room of some description - he’d always choose the chair which allowed him to have his back to the wall: a fear of people sneaking up on him, no doubt brought about by the job. Sitting next to him was a young girl of about eight years of age. She looked as though she’d been crying and she was clutching onto a doll. Her mother was sitting next to her. Detective Andrews caught the young girl’s eye and gave her a smile. She didn’t smile back, just looked at him with misty pale blue eyes. So much pain in those eyes. He wasn’t sure what she’d been through that night and didn’t ask but he couldn’t help but think of her as another lost soul in a world consumed by bad happenings. Had it not felt inappropriate to do so, he would have offered her one of the mints that he kept in his pocket - an old habit since resuming smoking again - as a way of showing her that not everything in this world is so bad. He looked around the rest of the room; drunks, drug addicts, a homeless person seeking refuge from the cold outside (hiding away from security in the corner of the room), and a couple of people (like the girl) who must have had some kind of accident or be suffering from an ailment of some description. The majority of the room, though, looked to be scum. His mind wandered back to thoughts of retirement. When you look around a relatively small room and see mostly assholes, and people you wouldn’t give a shit about if they died, it was time to reevaluate what he was doing with his life. Not that he really knew what else he could do with it, if he did retire. Regardless, it seemed fairly obvious to him now that there was little point in trying to help people anymore. He should have realised after his wife. He guessed something inside of him, somewhere, didn’t want him losing faith in humanity. Now, though, now he realised there was little point in trying to save it. The damage was done. The damage was irreversible. For every good person out there, there were at least ten bad. And that’s why he guessed he was so desperate for Rebecca to be okay. He still wasn’t sure how someone he had faile
d had managed to get so close to touching his own soul but he didn’t care. He just hoped, above all else, that she’d be okay. If she died, then the last bit of hope he carried would fade away with her.

  His weary eyes fixed upon the analogue clock on the far wall, above the head of the pretty receptionist. Nearly two in the morning now. His mind drifted to the thought of Rebecca. How long had she been there, lying in the blood? How much of that blood was her own and how much was the blood of the person lying face down in the middle of the room? Clearly more was their blood but...even so...she must have lost a lot too.