THE SOUL FIXER (A psychological thriller)

by D. M. Mitchell

  He grabbed Helen under the arms and dragged her to the canvas. Her body left a large bloody smear on the stone flags.

  He hated Silas. He hated him because in reality she never stopped loving him. That’s why she insisted he be kept locked away in the lighthouse. ‘He has to die,’ he told her. And she knew in her heart that one day he would have to be disposed of. But not yet, she would say, now is not the time. I will tell you when. He wanted to take down that damned portrait of his, smash it up and throw it on the fire. ‘I can’t do with his accursed eyes looking down at me every day!’ he said. Behind the picture was a large loose stone, which when pulled out revealed a cavity. This is where they stored their victims’ fancy gold watches, necklaces, wedding rings, anything of value that would fetch a tidy sum on the mainland. ‘We don’t need that thing,’ he said. ‘Get something else to hang up there.’ But she refused, and so his calm, gentle face smiled on them and their black deeds. She died loving him, he thought. He hated Silas Blake.

  ‘Tomorrow I will kill them all,’ he said drunkenly to her as he tried to close her dead eyelids. They refused and remained open in a suspicious half squint.

  He sat on the floor, collapsed tiredly against the wall, and with Helen’s doll-like waxen face looking up at him, unable to resist the heaviness leaning on his mind, he succumbed to asleep.

  ‘Over here!’

  Susan had to admit she was lost until she heard Matthew Collins shouting. It all looked so different in the dark; what she thought were the remains of the settlement had in fact turned out to be mere piles of boulders or some other trick of the land. She had begun to panic. So much so that she gasped in relief on hearing him call.

  She held up the lamp and made out his pale face staring from behind a grassy hillock. ‘That you, Matty?’

  ‘Who the hell do you think it’s going to be, lady? Put that light out. You want them to see us?’

  ‘We’re too far away,’ she said, but lowered her lamp and extinguished it as he demanded.

  ‘Light travels further than you know,’ he grumbled. ‘This your husband?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Paul replied for her.

  Matty gave him the once over. ‘Quick, this way.’

  His head disappeared from view and they hurried after him. He was standing by a black hole in a grassy mound topped with long pieces of stone.

  ‘You’ve got to be kidding!’ Paul said. ‘Inside there? Is that safe?’

  ‘Look, it’s fine by me if you want to stay up here and get your head blown off by Captain Haddock and his friends, but make your mind up fast because I’d like to keep my head on my shoulders.’ He dipped down into the hole, vanishing like the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland.

  ‘And you trust this guy, too?’ he asked Susan.

  ‘Have you got any other ideas?’

  He shrugged and followed Matty into the hole.

  It opened out into a slightly wider chamber, at the end of which was another opening before which Matty stood with his torch. Susan re-lit the lamp. In spite of all the rain the hard-packed earth on the chamber’s floor was dry.

  Matty grimaced in pain and clutched his arm. ‘So what’s the plan? Have you managed to find us a way off this island?’

  ‘There’s a young man called Hector, he’s going to bring his father’s boat in the morning, once it gets light.’

  ‘You sure about that?’

  She nodded. ‘Very sure.’

  ‘Did you bring something to eat, like I told you?’ he asked eagerly.

  Paul fished out a chocolate bar from his coat pocket. ‘That’s for starters,’ he said. ‘We managed to rustle up a few of the things we brought along with us to the island, but it isn’t much and it isn’t going to last the three of us very long at all.’

  Matty snatched the bar from him, ripped off the paper and stuffed the chocolate into his mouth. He gasped in sheer pleasure. ‘You don’t know how good that feels!’ he sighed, chomping down on more.

  ‘So what do we do now?’ said Paul.

  Matty swallowed, licked his lips of chocolate. ‘There are plenty of places down here to hide. It’s a veritable maze of interconnecting chambers and tunnels. This dig would occupy archaeologists for a decade at least.’

  ‘Nice to hear,’ said Paul. ‘So we stay here till morning?’

  ‘That’s the plan.’ Matty eyed the shotgun. ‘That might come in useful,’ he said.

  Paul held it close. ‘So you say this is where they dumped some of the bodies?’

  Matty nodded, forcing the last of the chocolate into his mouth and, Susan noticed, pocketing the wrapper, even in his condition obviously not wanting to spoil the site with rubbish. ‘Not in this chamber; that’s further along the coast. This is one I uncovered not so long ago. It heads out in that direction,’ he said, pointing into the black hole, ‘towards the cliffs.’

  ‘Is it safe?’ Paul asked.

  ‘It’s stood here for thousands of years so I’m not worried. The parts further out, near the cliffs, might be unstable as they’ve taken a battering over the years so I’d resist going that far in.’

  ‘I think I can resist,’ he said, sitting down and putting his back against the chamber wall, the shotgun by his side. He rubbed his ankle. ‘Any chance of making a fire?’

  Matty shook his scraggy head. ‘Not if someone is out there looking for us. They might see the smoke that leaks out, especially when it’s a full moon. We just have to get through the night as best we can.’ He sat down opposite Paul. ‘The nights are the worst,’ he said. ‘Can we leave the lamp on a while?’ he asked Susan. ‘It does something to your head being down here in the dark.’

  She agreed. It was like being buried alive, thought Susan. She adjusted the wick of the lamp and it burned brighter.

  Matty smiled and stared at it like he’d never seen a lamp before. He took out the chocolate wrapper and checked it over for crumbs, licking the end of his finger which he poked into the creases of the foil in an attempt to snag any last vestiges of chocolate. Paul eyed him warily. Pulled the gun closer.

  * * * *

  25

  Rats in a Trap

  She floated out of the pitch dark, at first appearing like a still blue flame sitting on the end of a match; a flame that expanded until the shape was clearly visible as her daughter Becky. And she brought the cold with her. An iciness that speared into Susan’s exposed flesh, and she folded her arms around her, her breath expelled in huge white clouds that didn’t dissipate but hung there in the air, coalesced into more shapes that pulsed with an enigmatic, hypnotic light. Vague faces appeared within them. Gaping mouths, eyeless sockets. They came together into a dense cloud behind Becky’s throbbing form.

  ‘Mother…’ she said, though her mouth didn’t move.

  ‘Becky,’ said Susan, but she could feel the fear and this time wanted to turn and run from the apparitions. ‘You’re a dream,’ she said. ‘You are not real. It’s all in my head. I’m going to wake up and you’ll be nothing more than a dream…’

  ‘Wake… Wake…’ Becky said. ‘He’s going to try and kill you. Wake, mother, wake…’

  Susan looked beyond her daughter’s shoulder. One of the shimmering faces hovered closer to her than the rest; its cloudy features swirled like milk dropped into water, but gradually became vaguely recognisable. Susan grew afraid as the face came closer to Becky. It solidified, and carved in the marble-like qualities of the pale head she saw her daughter’s murderer. She saw Eddie Hull.

  ‘Becky, look out!’ she screamed, trying to dart forward to help protect her from the killer, yet she could not move. She was pinned to the spot.

  Susan awoke, but the intense cold and dark remained and she sat upright, feeling clammy panic envelop her. But it only took her a second or two for her brain to adjust, and from the faintest glimmer of defused daylight seeping into the chamber she realised where she was and breathed a sigh.

  It was morning. The eerie dawn light, finding its way down the tunnel, painted one s
ide of her husband’s face, the remainder in shadow. He was sitting by the entrance to the tunnel that snaked out to the entrance, the shotgun across his lap, and he was staring straight at her.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said.

  ‘What time is it?’ she said, rubbing her eyes, then trying to massage some movement and warmth back into her arms.

  He peered in the gloom. ‘5.30, as far as I can make out. I’d offer you breakfast, but we’re in a hole in the ground.’ He gave a light chuckle.

  Matty Collins shuffled into wakefulness at the sound of voices. ‘I was dreaming I was home in my bed,’ he said disappointedly, as if this hadn’t been the first time he’d had that particular dream. He blinked hard. ‘It’s morning.’ Sleep dropped from him like he’d shrugged off a heavy greatcoat. He got to his feet, went over to the tunnel’s entrance. ‘Where did that kid Hector say he’d meet us? He said first light, didn’t he?’

  Susan pulled out the map, went to where Matty crouched, angled the paper in the direction where the light was best and pointed it out to him. ‘He said he’d bring the boat to a small cove around here. Do you know where it is, how far?’

  He nodded. ‘I think so. About a half mile north. If we follow the coast round we should be able to see him, if he’s coming.’

  ‘He’ll be there,’ she said. ‘He promised.’

  He glanced up the tunnel. ‘The weather’s taken a turn for the better. The strength of the wind has dropped at least.’

  ‘So what are we waiting for?’ said Paul. ‘Let’s not hang around here.’

  With that he went at a crouch up the tunnel. Susan followed him out. The dawn was just beginning to break, folding back the night. Matty was right; the wind had dropped but it was still extremely chilly, as if winter was already in the air. The black, indeterminate mountains were clearly visible against the lighter sky, and below them, in the dips and hollows of the rolling land the morning mist hung like white smoke. The grass at their feet was sprinkled with diamond beads of dew. The sea in the distance was calm and flat, like a sheet of brushed steel. Ordinarily Susan would have considered this one of the most beautiful sights she’d ever seen, but terror appeared to permeate the mist, tendrils of which drifted languidly, almost purposefully, over the sodden ground towards them.

  Matty poked his head from the hole, grimaced. ‘I need a pee,’ he said. He wandered away, behind a mound of collapsed stone and earth.

  Paul cracked open the shotgun to check it again. He snapped it shut.

  ‘Satisfied?’ Susan asked. ‘The cartridges aren’t going anywhere since the last time you looked.’ He stared at her, narrowed his eyes. He looked nervous, she thought. Up tight. His hands were clamped around the shotgun like white metal bands. ‘Are you OK?’

  He gave an abbreviated nod, licked his dry lips. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘We’ll get out of this mess,’ she assured. ‘Start over…’

  He shrugged, looked at the ground. ‘It’s too late for that,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Don’t say that…’ she said. ‘This hasn’t turned out quite like I expected. It’s bound to upset you.’

  ‘We can’t go back, Susan. I’m sorry…’ Then his face steeled.

  A loud retort interrupted the tension that had begun to mount between them, followed by a sharp little squeal of a scream from Matty, who came running around the stone mound, zipping up his fly as he ran. He was waving his hands for them to get back. Another shot rang out just as he reached them. They dropped down into the hollow formed in front of the entrance to the chamber.

  ‘They’re here!’ shouted Matty, diving inside the hole to take cover.

  As if in answer, another two shots broke the stillness and they heard metal ricochet shrilly off rock near them. Paul stood up, raised the shotgun, scanned the horizon, caught a glimpse of a dark shadow hiding behind boulders and let loose both barrels of the shotgun. It thumped into his shoulder with more force than he expected and he yelped in pain.

  ‘Shit!’ he said, popping the smoking cartridges. He fumbled for the box of cartridges and tossed it to Susan to take off the lid. ‘Quick, two more!’ He looked up to see the figure dart from its cover and make for a mound of earth closer to them. ‘Hurry, Susan!’ Her shaking hand placed the cartridges in his. He bent to the gun, struggled to slip the cartridges into place. When he did, snapped it closed and raised it again he aimed it at the place he last saw the man.

  ‘Is it Douglas?’ Susan asked.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, keeping his head low but maintaining his aim. He noticed how the barrel wavered in his trembling hands. ‘I don’t know where he’s gone,’ he said in alarm. ‘He could be anywhere. We’re like sitting ducks here. There’s too little cover.’

  As if to prove his point a shot exploded from somewhere to his left, quite a distance from where he had his sights trained. The shot hit the lip of the declivity where they sheltered and sharp stones tore into his face. He ducked down, clutching his cheek and at first Susan thought he’d been hit.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ she said, horrified.

  ‘Bastard!’ he said. ‘That was close! He’s a good shot.’

  ‘Have you ever used one of those?’ said Matty disparagingly.

  ‘Clay pigeons,’ he admitted.

  ‘Fucking brilliant!’ he said. ‘Give it to me! I’ve had some practice on my dad’s farm…’

  ‘Get your hands off it!’ Paul shouted angrily. Two shots in quick succession rang out and whined so close as to force them all back into the hole. ‘He’s got us where he wants us,’ he observed dryly. ‘He’s got all the cover. Great choice of hole, Matty!’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Matty wailed. ‘He’s going to kill us all!’

  ‘Not if I can help it,’ Paul replied, squinting as he gingerly raised his head to see where Douglas was. Another shot that cut uncomfortably close told him in no uncertain terms.

  ‘You can’t get out!’ Douglas called. ‘There’s nowhere to go!’

  ‘Go screw yourself, Douglas!’ Paul fired.

  ‘Don’t make him any madder!’ Matty whined.

  ‘Any madder?’ he said incredulously. ‘He’s out to kill us!’

  ‘Maybe we can make a truce with him…’

  ‘Are you joking?’ said Susan. ‘Matty, he wants to make sure we never get off this island.’

  Quiet fell, save for the shriek of an unseen seabird. A tense three minutes or so went by. ‘Do you reckon he’s gone?’ Matty asked. ‘Maybe he’s given up.’

  Paul said, ‘He’s probably working his way closer. Those last shots sounded pretty near to me. Is there another way out of the chamber, Matty?’

  ‘I don’t know, I never had the time to explore it that much. It’s like a maze down there. One of the passages might lead to another exit, but I can’t be sure. It could be a complete dead end whichever way we try.’

  ‘Can he collapse the entrance and seal it up once we’re inside?’

  He shook his head. ‘I doubt it. There are stone blocks weighing many tons holding it up. He’d need mechanical equipment to shift it.’

  ‘We haven’t got a choice; we’re going to have to go back inside, find another way out. He can’t seal us in, that’s one good thing. The only thing he can do is wait for us to come out, or if he thinks we might find another way out he’ll most likely follow us inside. That would at least level things up a bit.’

  Matty’s voice rose in pitch. ‘No, we can’t do that, we have to talk to him, work something out…’

  Paul pointed the gun at Matty.

  ‘Paul! What are you doing?’ cried Susan.

  ‘He’s the only one who has the slightest chance of guiding us through those tunnels and out again. Get inside, Matty. I mean it.’

  Matty’s face screwed up in horror. ‘You’re fucking mad!’ But he did as he was told and retreated inside the entrance.

  ‘It’s the only way,’ he said to Susan. ‘We can’t stay here.’

  She agreed with a brisk nod and went insi
de. She took up the lamp and lit it.

  ‘How many cartridges do we have left?’ he asked.

  She took the lid off the box and counted. ‘Seven. Is that enough?’

  He raised his brows. ‘Who knows? This is my first OK Coral.’

  She emptied the cartridges into her coat pocket, tossed away the box. ‘I’m guessing Douglas has no such shortage.’

  ‘He had a rucksack with him, provisions I assume,’ Paul said. ‘He’s not expecting this to be over fast. He’s here for the duration, till we’re all dead.’ He turned quickly to Matty. ‘Right, time to get a move on.’

  They heard movement outside, the distinct sound of tiny stones being dislodged.

  ‘He’s here!’ Matty said.

  Susan pushed him, and Matty took the lamp she offered and he raced down the tunnel cut into the chamber. She followed, casting a backwards glance at the sound of Paul’s shotgun firing towards the entrance, more as a warning as he didn’t have anything to aim at. He ran after her, wafting his hand for her to get moving. They disappeared down the black tunnel just as the end of a shotgun poked into the chamber.

  Douglas MacLeod scrambled cautiously inside. He switched on his torch and shone it into the tunnel at the far end of the chamber. He made out the swish of movement and then it vanished.

  He went to the side of the hole, crouched down and peered round. ‘You can’t go anywhere!’ he cried. ‘You’re like rats in a trap!’

  But there was no answer, so with a grunt he moved down the tunnel after them, the dank air causing the hairs on his neck to stand on end.

  * * * *

  26

  An Agonised Shiver

  They threaded at a crouch through the narrow, stone-lined passageway. The dark beyond the reach of the lamp was solid, and the passage behind them disappeared into blackness as they progressed. The tunnel twisted and turned for no discernable reason. Every now and again they passed potential exits, only for Matty to shine the lamp inside and reveal an empty chamber. He explained the settlement had been abandoned before they could be put to use.