The King of Terrors (a psychological thriller combining mystery, crime and suspense)

by Mitchell, D. M.

  * * * *

  The Lunar Club

  Elldale, Derbyshire

  1972

  He was reminded very much of the H. G. Wells’ novel, The Time Machine; the very beginning of things when the time traveller invites his learned friends around to his house so he can reveal the secret of his experiments. Recall the exciting and bizarre tale of his adventures. Gain their confidence.

  The difference for Charles Rayne was that this was the first time he would have met his two friends and colleagues in the flesh. They had communicated animatedly for a number of years by letter and phone. All three of them young and fervently ambitious historians, each in their own way determined to make their mark on their profession and the world. Each taking joy that there were other similar minds to share their passions, their theories and the lust for life that lay ahead. Together they would explore new horizons, shatter conventional belief, to find their own place in history.

  They called themselves The Lunar Club.

  Charles had suggested the name after the Lunar Society of Birmingham, formed in the 1760s by a group of similarly ambitious, inventive and imaginative young men who would together transform the future – Matthew Boulton and James Watt, Erasmus Darwin, Josiah Wedgwood and Joseph Priestly. Together they not only oiled the wheels of the Industrial Revolution but made them.

  Given that Charles could only go outside at night the name appeared doubly fitting. Together they would shine a bright light on the dark past. But tonight the direction of the Lunar Club would take a new and exciting turn. Tonight Charles would lay down a theory that in time would make them notorious, make them legends. But he needed their help, and, like the time traveller, he needed their complete confidence. For what he was about to reveal, the results of many years of study carried out beneath the conventional historical research that had already started to make his name, was an idea so important, so far-reaching, that it would create a tidal wave of attention that would overthrow many entrenched beliefs, and have incalculable ramifications for both the present and the future. It would change everything for all of them.

  But first he had to meet them, and Charles Rayne was nervous. They knew of his condition, of course. But the first sight of his disfigured face most people found disturbing. He didn’t want his illness to overshadow events. So he had warned them not to be appalled or upset, and they returned jokingly that they were appalled and upset that he would think such a thing.

  He was alone now. Following his parents’ death the house belonged to him. It had become his prison and his sanctuary. His published works were reaching many thousands of people the world over, but he felt he could not travel beyond this small village. He did not wish people to see him. He had to be under cover before daylight. In the end he avoided invitations to conventions, to speak at lectures. No image of him appeared in any of his books. He existed on his reputation, making just enough money to keep his head above choppy financial waters. But he had gathered admirers, fellow historians, who became close friends. Friends that had never met him. But tonight that would change and he grew ever more excited and nervous as the time for their arrival grew near.

  When they both finally turned up at his door, the full moon raining down its silvery light on them (it was only appropriate they timed the inaugural meeting of the Lunar Club to coincide with a full moon), to his joy they did not flinch once at his appearance, and they both immediately launched into a flurry of anecdotes small and large; who was doing what, who was getting what wrong, a shocking treatise on Benjamin Franklin, an inspiring lecture at Greenwich on Milton, and what God-awful tea they served up on British Rail.

  Charles fussed over them, prepared tea, and afterwards they sat by the fire drinking wine before moving onto whiskey and cigarettes. He was so happy and they looked positively energised to be all together.

  He’d seen photographs of them, naturally, but in real life they looked far different. Howard Baxter, tall, spindly, swept back dark hair, a firecracker of a man whose passion exploded at the slightest spark to his passion’s blue touch-paper. He’d taken a slight career detour and had become an archivist. And Carl Wood; quieter, smaller than he’d expected, who lit up cigarette after cigarette in nervous succession and left the greater amount of the talking to the other two, except to make a remark every now and again that was as sharp as a knife.

  Then Charles rose from his seat and said he had something to show them. Would they follow him to his study? The boyish frivolity of earlier gave way to serious contemplation as he lifted out his carefully prepared notes and laid them on the table in front of them, peeling back his findings a layer at a time, to demonstrate how he reached his conclusions, so there could be no mistake, so they were clear about what they were seeing. He watched them as their faces grew solemn with disbelief and disappointment, expressions that said that they would have to let their friend down carefully when this was all over; watched them as they were gradually infused with excitement, as over the hours he drew them deeper into his research, pointed out the proof, tabled copies of mediaeval documents, books, more notes. They discussed the implications, tested the facts, argued and discussed it all over again.

  Finally Charles Rayne sat back, breathless, completely exhausted with the effort, and then silence descended on the room.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said at length, ‘there you have it. I need your help. Are you with me?’

  And the members of the Lunar Club, in grave silence, nodded and shook hands.

  * * * *

  5

  This Side of Dead

  London, December 1975

  ‘How is she tonight?’ she asked.

  He came to her side, nuzzled up to her rather too closely, she thought. His arm brushed against hers and she moved away and folded her arms against the barely disguised suggestion. ‘She’s having one of her strops,’ he said. He looked across at the woman lying on the narrow hospital bed, her wrists and ankles firmly strapped down with thick leather belts. Bare arms and legs poked out of a thin, unflattering, green cotton nightgown. ‘We are, aren’t we?’ he said to her, his neck craning forward, his chin thrust out almost contemptuously. He lifted the clipboard that hung at the foot of the bed, the woman staring cold and hard at him. She jerked her legs and caused him to react fractionally. ‘It’s no use fighting against it,’ he said, his grin a whisker away from a sneer. ‘You’d think you’d have learned after all this time that you’re not going anywhere in a hurry.’ He flipped a page or two. ‘She’s due her usual sedative.’ A glance at his watch. ‘Looking at her I’d shove double into her. Take the sting out of her attitude.’

  ‘We don’t want to harm the babies,’ she reminded him. ‘She’s stressed as it is.’ She nodded to the grey metal box bleeping by the side of the bed.

  ‘She’s refusing to eat again,’ he remarked casually. ‘We’ll give you a little more time to change your mind, young lady, and if you don’t, well, you know what’s coming.’ He indicated down his throat with his index finger. ‘And remember, you’re eating for three now!’

  She yanked hard and furiously at her restraints. The bed shook a little but she gave up, her eyes squeezing shut, tears being pressed from them.

  ‘Don’t be cruel to her,’ she said to him. ‘Why do you insist on treating her like that?’

  She knew why, of course; because he could. Because the woman didn’t even possess a name. She had a number. She was a number. And what’s more she was completely helpless, pegged out like a bug on paper, and the ego of men like him grew fat on helplessness, grew strong on it, relished it. She loathed him and all his kind. But she didn’t let it show. She swallowed down the feeling, though it stuck in her throat.

  ‘She doesn’t know any better. How can she? She isn’t normal. She’s a freak,’ he said. It didn’t carry any emotion. It was a statement of fact.

  ‘She’s a human being,’ she defended, yet in even the short time she’d known this man Stephanie Jacobs knew compassion was a quality he didn’t posse
ss, or he kept it pretty much chained up in a dark recess somewhere in that black soul of his. How could that be so, she thought, in a career that was dedicated to the betterment of the human condition? Perhaps that’s where she had gone wrong – or right, depending upon your point of view; perhaps she had allowed compassion to creep in too much, to prise open that cool, clinical reserve of hers. Not so long ago she had considered herself to be immune to such sentiments, for you simply couldn’t do this job and have any deep kind of feeling for the subject. The woman on the bed had to be meat in a clinical trial. Simply that. But it had all changed and she was on the verge of throwing her career into the trashcan because that often-cruel veneer of medical dispassion had been scraped away once and for all.

  She took the clipboard from him. ‘She’s stable?’

  ‘Mother and foetuses doing well,’ he said. He went over to a cabinet on the wall and took out a glass bottle and a syringe. ‘Time for bye-byes, miss,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll finish that off,’ said Stephanie.

  He pumped air out of the needle, a thread of silver liquid arcing upwards. ‘That’s OK, I’ve got it,’ he said, eyeing the syringe carefully.

  ‘It’s two in the morning. You should have finished hours ago. Go home. You’re supposed to be going out with your wife tomorrow – today – or have you forgotten?’ She held out her hand for the syringe. Beckoned enticingly with her fingers. ‘Come, give it here; it’s past your bed time too.’

  He hesitated momentarily then handed it over. ‘Careful, Dr Jacobs, she’s a little wildcat tonight.’ He paused at the door, turned back to her. ‘I’d prefer it if I were going somewhere with you instead, you know.’ He grinned. ‘Come on, give me a sign. Give me some hope.’

  ‘You’re married,’ she pointed out, tapping the syringe with her fingernail.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So go to your wife,’ she said, smiling at him and turning to the woman.

  ‘You little tease,’ he said, leaving her and closing the door.

  ‘You little prick,’ she said under her breath, her smile falling away. Stephanie Jacobs moved over to the bed; the restrained woman lifted her head slightly, watched her keenly, the muscle in her smooth jaw working away like a mole beneath sand. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, holding aloft the syringe. But she quickly pumped out the contents into the air and tossed the needle into a sharps bin. ‘Sorry that he’s such an arsehole.’ She bent to her haunches, touched the young woman’s forehead. It was very warm and damp with sweat. ‘Listen, I’m going to leave the room for a few minutes. I want you to stay calm, and if anyone comes in I need you to behave as if I’ve given you the sedative. Do you understand? You’ve had the sedative. Now do as I say. I’ve come to help you get out of here.’

  ‘You bitch!’ snarled the woman hoarsely.

  Stephanie gave a shrug. ‘I can’t argue with you there. Remember what I told you, if you want to get out of here.’

  She went to the door, opened it fractionally to check the corridor. It was empty. A fluorescent light flickered nervously. She hurried down the corridor, the sound of her footsteps coming back at her hollow and unusually loud, as if they strived to betray her. She felt sick with apprehension, her legs threatening to buckle beneath her, but there was no choice now. She knew she had to go through with this. She had the access. She would go unchallenged.

  A part of her wished she had never met them both.

  She wished she had never met Pipistrelle or listened to his outlandish ramblings, because that is what she first thought them. The ramblings of a man who went by the name of a bat. How crazy, how outlandish. But now she knew differently. It was she that had been caught up in something twisted, not he. On one level she hated Pipistrelle, because he’d confronted her, held up her dark deeds to the light for her to see in all their corrupt glory, and she did not like what she beheld. But there could be redemption, he said. It did not have to be like this. There could be salvation.

  Then there was the other man. A powerful, respected being in his own right. A giant in the pharmaceutical industry. She was in awe of him. They all were, even his peers. How could she resist that? Better people had tried and failed. She realised how easily she had fallen for his flattery and the twin lures of a high financial reward and her name up there with the giants of research, and how easily his honeyed promises had led her to become something cold and vile.

  Yes, she had been attracted to the career partly because of the illness that took her mother in old age and scrambled her mind so much that she wasn’t the same woman. Attracted to it because she could make a difference to people’s lives. It was partly why medical research held such allure. Partly. But once there her greed for professional recognition rose quickly like oil in water, to the surface, so that when she had shown startling promise, and had been headhunted for higher and better things, she gorged on the opportunities heaped before her, and entered, almost without question, her darkest phase; a phase when she felt she choked her very humanity in the process.

  And in truth that’s why she was here, to atone for her sins. That’s why she must go through with this and accept the consequences, whatever they might be. Pipistrelle had promised safety, for herself and her year-old daughter, and she believed him. Trusted him.

  God, she wished she had never heard of Project Gilgamesh.

  The ladies’ locker room was empty, as she expected. There were few staff members abroad at this hour, a couple of colleagues hunched over their Petri dishes and agar jellies in a lab down the corridor; a security guard up top, guarding the main entrance to the underground chambers; another guard floating around, patrolling the building somewhere. She unlocked the metal door to her own locker, withdrew a white lab coat. Contrary to popular myth, they rarely wore them all the time, as seen in the movies. Most researchers preferred not to wear them and there was only a rush to put them on when they were being inspected by the bigwigs. This coat was her spare. She groped in the locker for a plastic name badge. This was definitely not hers. Pipistrelle had made a false one based upon her own. She looked closely at it; he’d done a good job and she wondered where he got the expertise. The likeness to the woman in the bed was close enough to fool a quick, disinterested glance, and that, she hoped, was all that was needed.

  She took out a pair of flat shoes. They may be a size too big, she thought, but they’d have to do. She put everything into a carrier bag and checked the corridor before dashing out.

  ‘Evening, Stephanie,’ said a voice at her back. She turned, horrified.

  He walked calmly down the corridor towards her, his hands in his pockets.

  Randall Tremain was young, ambitious, you could read it in the way he carried himself, she thought. He was the head of security’s number two. Second in charge. His good looks, his warm smile, were masks to a far colder nature. She didn’t trust him, in the same way he trusted no one else. He smiled but she realised he was scrutinising her, digging deep beneath the fragile crust of her outward calm. She hadn’t expected him to be here. He wasn’t supposed to be in the building tonight.

  ‘Good evening, Mr Tremain.’

  ‘She is well?’

  Stephanie nodded. ‘Well enough.’

  ‘Have to look after our valuable little investments, don’t we?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  He stared for a second longer than was comfortable. ‘I’m keeping you from your job, I’m sorry.’ He passed her and disappeared down the corridor.

  She breathed a heavy sigh of relief, waited a few seconds and then rushed back to the room.

  The woman lay watching her closely as she unloaded the contents of the carrier bag onto the foot of the bed. Stephanie bent down to her. ‘I’m now going to untie the straps from your ankles. I need you to keep calm and keep quiet. Do you understand?’ She placed a hand on the woman’s arm. ‘I promise to get you out of here, so please do as I say. For both of us.’ She drew in a calming breath and untied the first ankle. It left a large red welt. The woman didn’t
move. She unbuckled the next, and then moved swiftly around the bed to the strap holding down the woman’s right arm. Finally she paused at the buckle on the last strap. ‘Remember what I told you,’ she said. ‘Keep calm.’

  As soon as the strap was released the young woman swiped hard at Stephanie, hitting her in the jaw and sending her reeling backwards. She attempted to get off the bed, rise to her feet, but her feeble legs crumpled beneath her and she fell to the floor. She began to drag herself to the door.

  Stephanie caught her by the shoulders. ‘Stop!’ she said. ‘Can’t you see you’re still too weak?’ But the woman shrugged her off, her fist striking out again, this time lending Stephanie a heavy blow on the arm. She had no choice but to hold her down, piling her full weight on her, surprised that even in her weakened state the desire for freedom gave her added strength. She eventually calmed down, the fight knocked from her.

  ‘You’re trying to trick me,’ she said. ‘It’s all part of playing with my head.’

  ‘No, no tricks,’ she assured her, releasing her hold on her. ‘I’m going to get you out.’

  ‘Why should I believe you?’

  ‘Because you don’t have a choice,’ she returned flatly. She took out a bottle and a syringe from her lab-coat pocket. ‘I’m going to give you a shot of this,’ she said.

  ‘Like hell you are!’ snarled the woman, using the metal foot of the bed to raise herself to her feet. She put a hand to her head as the room began to spin crazily.

  ‘You’re still feeling the after-effects of the drugs you’ve been receiving. This will help counter them, give you a burst of energy. You’re going to need it.’

  ‘You think I’m going to let you shove that thing into me, after I’ve been treated like an animal all this time? You come near me with that and I’ll sink the thing deep into that black heart of yours – if you fucking had one!’ She sank like a lead weight onto the bed, her vision blurring, her head pounding. She knew she was on the verge of blacking out.