by Sian Rosé
A car sped down the road alongside where they were parked, hurtling loudly down the often deserted country road, kicking up clouds of dust beneath its tyres.
“How’re you feeling?” Minnie then asked, turning to look at the back seat where three children were sitting, their bodies upright, ready to spring into action at their parents’ command.
Zach, the oldest at eight years, held his baby brother’s pudgy hand and forced his fat little thumb into position to indicate a thumbs up. He grinned that irresistibly cheeky smile that Minnie knew would be the cause of many broken hearts someday. Lloyd, the baby, was a bruiser and already resembled a miniature thug with his bald head and chunky limbs, even with a dummy in his mouth. Sitting beside her brothers, Stella kicked her legs enthusiastically, her pretty blue eyes twinkling with delight. Although all three children had been raised from birth to help out with their parents’ scams, the art of committing crimes sewn into the very fabric of their existences, there was something about this job that was different.
Something about this job was special.
And while all three Garnet children were too young to fully understand why it was such an important task at hand, they still somehow understood how much it meant to their mother and father.
They were going to do their parents proud.
“Can we go now?” Stella asked delightedly, barely able to sit still in her seat.
*
Norah Jenkins frowned as her deep brown eyes flicked up and down the crumpled shopping list. Her neat, handwritten scrawl clearly indicated that they’d needed milk- semi-skimmed. She’d even underlined the word in green pen. Groaning, she lowered the list onto the kitchen counter and stared dismally at the blue-top bottle of milk sitting on the table, just staring at her proudly.
“For God’s sake, Norm,” she shouted, screwing up her wrinkled face.
Although, she told herself when she got no reply, she shouldn’t be so surprised. After all, her younger brother had been nothing but a pain in the arse her entire life. And for the last nine years, the problems he caused her had been amplified ten-fold because she’d had no option but to become his full-time carer.
“Norm!” she snapped again, rubbing her forehead as she shuffled out of the kitchen and into the hallway. She ducked her head into the archway that led into the living room and tutted loudly as she saw the ugly, deformed mound where what was left of his hair had once been. As always, he was sitting in his armchair with a face like thunder, his one barely-functioning eye glued to the television set. “For god’s sake. You have one job. Do the daily milk run.”
Norman Jenkins glared at her. Still, even almost a decade later, when Norm pulled certain faces, he was beyond hideous. Not just hideous, but downright terrifying. Norah had seen the horrific scars, the sunken collapsed hollows of his broken face, and every other brutal wound he’d endured from that night, but she could still not get used to it.
He still scared her.
Before Norah could decide whether or not to press the matter further, the loud, old-fashioned doorbell chimed.
It startled her.
People didn’t often come around.
“This isn’t over,” she grumbled at her brother before shuffling back down the remainder of the hallway towards the front door. Through the foggy glass panels of the front door, sunlight streamed in and projected two narrow illuminated strips onto the stretch of tattered carpet. As the old woman came closer, she squinted as she made out an unfamiliar silhouette moving behind the glass.
Norah blinked, surprised to see the unfamiliar outline of what appeared to be a child standing there on the doorstep. Two, in fact. Honestly, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d even seen a kid. She rarely left the house, and nobody ever visited. All the neighbours were old, decrepit recluses, just like she and Norman had rapidly become since the accident. The stress and trauma of which seemed to have aged them both twenty years overnight.
Her face pointed with curiosity; she reached out a hand for the doorknob and turned, pulling it towards her. As the latch released, the sweet, spring air from outside flooded in, its smooth kiss refreshing on the skin of her creased and weathered face.
Again, she blinked, sunlight stinging her eyes.
“Oh, thank goodness!” the high ring of a little girl’s voice. Instinctively, Norah shielded her eyes with her hand, blocking the rays of the sun so that she could inspect her unexpected callers. She was, Norah immediately noted, a pretty, dainty little thing. Blonde hair and a flawless, fair complexion, with a heart-shaped face and eyes that were like electric. Silly as it was, Norah found herself feeling jealous of the little girl. She herself had never been the beautiful type. She and Norm had not been particularly lucky in the genetics department.
“So sorry to bother you,” the boy said, standing just a little bit taller than the girl. “Me and my siblings are lost.” He gestured to the baby he carried in his arms.
The children spoke with posh, well-articulated voices that screamed privilege. Norah resisted the urge to sneer as she remembered how she and Norm had been beaten to within an inch of their lives as children, forced to wear tatters and share the same stinky mattress on the floorboards.
“How?” Norah asked, raising an eyebrow. “Where?”
“Please, miss,” the girl spoke again, doll-like eyes wide as she looked up at her. “Please let us in. We need help.”
Norah stepped a foot out of the door and into the outside. She looked up and down the street below, registering the familiar dusty cars and crumbling, neglected houses. Everything was still and quiet, apart from the rustling of leaves and grass in the distance. She retracted, then cocked her head, eyes full of suspicion as she studied the children.
“Please may we come in, miss?” the boy repeated.
At that, Norah scoffed. The way they spoke was so perfect as if their words had been planned and perfected right down to every last syllable.
But, as bitter and twisted as she had become over the years, Norah wasn’t evil. Despicable deeds were more her brother’s forte.
“Fine,” she said, stepping aside to let the children pile in. “I’m calling the police to come and get you, though.”
“Thank you so much,” both children said in unison, eyes twinkling sweetly as they obediently stepped over the threshold and into the house.
It struck Norah as odd that they seemed so calm. She watched them enter the house and glide like effortless angels down the hallway, not an inch of discomfort or concern on their cherub-like faces. The little darlings had lost mother and father, but to look at them, you’d think they were off to a tea party.
Still, she slammed the front door shut and followed them up the carpet.
“Go through to the kitchen; that’s where the phone is,” she instructed hastily, deciding that parading children around in front of Norm was likely a very bad idea. “Sit down at the table, and I’ll call the old bill…” muttering and grumbling under her breath, she padded in her woollen slippers onto the kitchen tiles, beady eyes watching the children take seats at the old, wooden dining table.
“What’re your names then?” she sighed, as if the whole thing was a real chore, turning her back on them to reach the landline down from its cradle on the wall. “I’m a very busy woman, you know…” she lied.
But as soon as her fingers grazed the plastic receiver, a sharp, breath-taking stab of pain pierced her side. The phone did a bungee-jump from its cord, clattering against the kitchen sides as it bounced, then hovered limply just above the floor.
Gasping, Norah collapsed onto her knees and attempted to turn around, but before she could, another shot of agony plunged into the flesh beside her spine, causing her rickety frame to convulse. Her head smacked on the ground, colliding hard with the kitchen tiles, ragged breaths grabbing in vain for final shreds of air.
The woman lay, writhing in her suffering, summoning her very last strand of energy to open her eyelids and gaze up at the familiar, pasty-yellow ceil
ing.
Above her, three heads stared sombrely downwards- each of them solemnly contemplating her slow, excruciating death as if watching a particularly unremarkable game of chess unfold.
As the darkness crept in around the edges of her vision, and the word slowly began to fade away into nothingness, Norah Jenkins had just one resounding thought, echoing in her dying brain.
Although she could not pinpoint exactly how, she knew that, in one way or another, this was definitely Norm’s fault. For the longest time, she’d always harboured the notion that her demise, when it eventually came, would be at her younger brother’s hands.
And she was right.
Chapter Fifty-eight
Spring, 2008
Darkness.
And pain.
It leaked through Norm’s bones, stretching out from his armpits right up to his fingertips like a tree root growing too fast for his flesh to catch up. Instinctively, he jerked his body and discovered that he could not move his wrists. He could feel that they were stuck, tight and rigid in the small of his back, constricted together so firmly that the ties sent shocks of pain flying up his arms.
“Norah?” he called out, his voice croaky, his throat dry and sore from where he very rarely used it anymore. The foul stench of his breath tickled his nostrils and congealed in a moist film on his upper lip.
Norm lifted his head, a motion that made the back of his neck ache. He realised that he was lying on his stomach, and something was securing his wrists and hips, rendering him immobile.
“Norah?” he snarled into the blackness, venom simmering in his temples. “Norah, cut this bullshit right now.”
The bitch.
Norm had always known that he couldn’t play his sister forever. Not really. For their whole lives, she had been his elastic band, bending in every direction, stretching, chopping, and changing her form and her life, all for him.
But even elastic bands had their limit.
Even elastic bands would eventually snap.
He shivered, the movement causing the surface beneath him to creak like old floorboards.
“Nor…” he began again, his call chopped abruptly in half as an overhead light was suddenly switched on, and a luminous yellow glow spilled into the room.
Blinking wearily, Norm glanced around, blinking as the light stung his eyeballs. Around him, the familiar, old-fashioned kitchen somehow seemed sinister, particularly with the pitch-black night visible through the thin, decrepit windows.
“Norah,” he shouted, dread beginning to ebb into his call. “Norah, what the hell is this?”
Footsteps.
Loud, heavy clunks somewhere behind him, circling the table. Then, they paused, and there was a grunt of effort followed by more footsteps and the sound of something being dragged along the floor. He could hear them, but he could also feel them, their vibrations prickling his senses in a forbidding rhythm.
“What are you doing?” Norm raised his voice in a vain attempt to sound brave. “Hm? This your idea of a joke, Norah?”
The man held his breath as the footsteps stopped.
Deathly silence crashed into his eardrums like smashing glasses, so deafening that the entire world seemed to stop spinning for a heartbeat, which in reality felt like an eternity.
Sweat prickled his back.
Then, movement.
A painful groan as the table legs buckled against the kitchen floor.
Beneath him, a blur of a shape was shoved roughly into his eye line.
A tight gasp of shock spilled from his lips; with it, a gloop of saliva trickling from his mouth and spattering on the cold, pasty face that he now registered staring up at him.
It was Norah, staring blindly up at him; the tiny segment of life that was once there, burning like a candle in her eyes, had been extinguished.
And the more he looked, the more he stared at her shape beneath him, the worse the scene got.
There was blood.
Norm hadn’t seen so much blood since that night in the wood. The night that had served him the horrific burns and scars that remained permanently etched into his flesh, branding him the monster that he truly was. It had been like a dark burgundy river, gushing in a frightening current from an old friend’s gut. Spraying everything in a ten metre radius, sticking to his skin, seeping into his bones.
From her neck down, Norah was saturated in blood, a growing halo of it seeping from underneath her body. Her lips were blue, slightly agape as if she were about to say something.
“Norah…” he croaked, heart thudding, its rapid beat growing faster and faster as he panted and the terrible realisation finally dawned on him.
His sister was dead.
And not just dead.
Murdered.
“I…” his frail body could not summon the energy to scream or say anything. Instead, he just groaned, his pulse hammering incessantly in his skull as he found himself unable to tear his pupils away from her cold, dead corpse.
“Hi, Norm.”
A woman’s voice. Young.
Norman yelped involuntarily then, like a frightened little dog about to be hit by a car. He writhed in his restraints, twisting and jerking his neck to try to catch a glimpse of the person who had presumably killed his sister and tied him up like a dead hog.
“Is he awake?” a man’s voice this time, deep and rough around the edges. Someone who sounded hard. Toughened by pain and trauma.
The woman squatted down beside Norah’s corpse and looked up into Norman’s sweat-covered face, a nasty smile unfurling on her strikingly beautiful lips. Her eyes were intense in their blueness, hypnotizing almost.
The kind of eyes you never forget.
“My God…” he gasped. “It’s… you…”
“Right you are,” she whispered with an affirmatory nod, her palms stretched out on her spindly knees. “Do you even know my name, Norm?”
He swallowed.
She threw back her head and laughed, its shrill ring sharp and grating in the still atmosphere. “Thought as much. Amazing, isn’t it? How you can turn an entire person’s life upside down and not even know their fucking name?”
There was a loud bang and a surge of pain in the back of Norm’s left knee cap. The entire table groaned again and rattled, masking his low winces of agony.
“Do you remember much of that night, Norm?” the girl whispered. He could see, even through the pain that started to blur his vision, that she was young. Early twenties at the very oldest. Before he could reply, she was continuing, her words ejecting in drawn-out sounds that reminded Norm of every heartbreak he’d ever endured. “I’m sure you must do. After all, every time you look in the mirror, it must be like reliving the whole thing.”
Norm felt his scars burn.
“You wanted to fuck me, didn’t you?” she asked her smile widening, eyes shining as tears began to well up inside them.
BANG.
The sound was followed by an ear-splitting crack as another jolt of pain hit Norm, this time on his right leg. He cried out like a dying animal, the fractured bone screaming in its agony.
“ANSWER ME!” yelled the girl, pushing her face up closer to the deformed, contorted mess on top of his shoulders. “Is that what it was all about, Norm? Assaulting an innocent sixteen-year-old with her entire life ahead of her?”
Snot dribbled from his nose and formed a vile paste with his saliva and tears. At the same time, the girl sniffed and furiously wiped her face with the back of her sleeve.
“I’m sorry…”
“What?”
“I’m sorry!” he yelled, his face reddening as he glared up at her. “Look at my face! You think I haven’t suffered enough for my crimes?”
The faceless man behind him brought the blunt object down again, this time at the base of Norm’s spine, another ear-splitting crack immediately filling the air.
“HELP!” he shrieked, though it was a feeble, crackly call. His male attacker smirked, eyes narrowing as he watched the pathet
ic waste of shit that squirmed underneath him on the kitchen table.
“Sure not as tough now, are you Norm?” he hissed.
Through her tears, the girl shook her head and laughed, returning her attention to her prisoner. “What? Oh no, Norm. You’ve got me all wrong. I don’t want you to suffer. After all, we should be thanking you. Repaying you.”
Norman inhaled and lowered his head, angling it downwards so that he was forced to stare into the deadened, glassy gaze of his sister’s corpse. It was better than facing the girl.
Both women had been his victims, but at least Norah was silenced by her demise.
It was then that the man slowly walked around the table and roughly grabbed Norm’s forehead, jerking his entire skull upwards in one swift movement so that he was forced to meet his eye.
“That’s right, Norm,” he said in his husky voice. “If it wasn’t for you, Minnie and I wouldn’t be anywhere near as happy as we are right now. As happy as you showed us, we could be.”
The girl, Minnie, nodded.
“That’s absolutely right, Norm,” she spoke icily. “You changed our whole lives. At first, we were angry because we thought you’d ruined it. You know, separating us from our family and friends, making us have to go on the run from the police…”
“Not to mention having to get involved with a crime just to feed ourselves, and in the process being held hostage by a ring of sex traffickers,” added the man cheerily. He dropped Norm’s head and wielded a wooden baseball bat, presumably the culprit for the old man’s smashed knee cap.
Minnie reached out and traced a finger on Norm’s cheek, the pad of her forefinger soft against his quivering, sweating flesh. “But it all came right, Norm,” she told him silkily. “Everything turned out A-Okay.”
Norman shivered, the marrow in his bones aching as he sensed that in spite of her words, everything was most certainly not going to be okay for him.
Not in any way, shape, or form.
“What do you want with me?” he asked, forcing himself to look up, the question coming out of his throat like sandpaper as he waited for his fate.