Pariah

by Thomas Emson

  “W-where is he?” said Hallam, knowing there was another presence here—something cold and sickly and dangerous, something like decay.

  Spencer had shaken his head. “He comes and he goes. I got no clue. All I know is I’m shitting myself most of the time, and that’s the truth. I don’t know nothing else ‘cept I’m scared.”

  Hallam had asked what happened in the lockup. “Was it him?”

  Spencer had explained. He’d told Hallam about the places Jack had taken him. “I thought I knew every inch of Barrowmore, but there’s places I’m glad I didn’t know. Places I can never go again, man. Actually, I don’t think no human can go there. Not unless they’re cursed or something.”

  “What kind of places?”

  “Places full of bones. You can hear people—or maybe they’re not people—but you can hear screaming. Far off. Way away. Places that smell like death. Makes you sick and weak. Makes you feel like you’re dirty all over and you’ll never wash it off. These places are near here, Hallam. Like, round corners I recognize. Down passageways I’ve pissed in. Behind walls where I’ve smoked dope. They’re there. They’re here. All around us. Dark, dark places. Evil places. Fucking lost places.”

  Hallam had said, “You know the police are looking for you?”

  Spencer nodded.

  Hallam said, “And they’ll be smashing down your door very soon.”

  Spencer nodded again.

  “What will you do?” Hallam had asked.

  “I don’t decide anymore—Jack does. I got to go lie down, Hallam. You wait here. He wants you.”

  “He wants me?”

  “He wants you.”

  And Spencer had gone through a door, shutting it, leaving Hallam in the living room with his heart leaping.

  He wants you.

  I’m wanted, thought Hallam. I’m wanted.

  Now, sitting on the mattress, waiting, he wondered why this Jack wanted him.

  Suddenly the room darkened. It grew colder. The sheet draped over the window flapped.

  Hallam’s mouth and throat dried out, as if all the moisture had been sucked from his body.

  A dark shape swept across the room—a shadow or a cloud.

  Hallam curled up into a ball. His bones clattered. His nerves frayed. His excitement grew.

  As if out of thin air, the figure stepped forward and stood in front of him.

  The man’s cape flapped. Hallam was sure he could see anguished faces in the material, but it was probably his eyes playing tricks. He looked into the man’s face. The skin was deathly pale. The eyes were coal-black. A tuft of hair sprouted from his chin. It looked like a goat’s beard. The man smiled, and his thin, red lips parted.

  He spoke, and his voice was like something very cold being injected directly into Hallam’s veins.

  “You want to be of service, don’t you?”

  Hallam trembled.

  “I can tell. There’s something in you, Hallam. Something foul. Something putrid.”

  For a second, Hallam thought he was being insulted.

  But then the strange man said, “I mean that as a compliment. There are many bad men. Most men are bad in some way. Some are malicious. Wicked. Cruel. But not many have that beautiful, pure evil in them that I sense in you. It’s very sad that you’ve not had the chance to properly share it with the world.”

  Hallam tried to speak. Tried to say “thank you” to his savior. But no words came. Only a bubble of spit filling his mouth.

  “But don’t fret, Hallam. I’m here, now. Jack’s here. And Jack will help you fulfill your potential. Stick with me, Hallam, and all your dreams will come true.”

  Hallam swooned.

  “I’ll do anything,” he said.

  “Yes, you will,” said Jack.

  “Anything at all.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I want you do what you’ve always wanted to do.”

  Hallam gawped.

  “I want you to kill a child.”

  Chapter 55

  SHOWREEL

  Candice said, “It’s really evil that Italy’s mum, like, died.”

  Jasmine hurried down the road. She wanted to be home. Her mum was back. She’d called and said, “Jasmine, where are you?” and Jasmine had lied and said, “I’m at Candice’s” when she was actually hanging around with some friends, some of them smoking.

  Mum had said, “Come home, wherever you are.”

  “I’m at Candice’s.”

  “I don’t care. Come home.”

  Mum knew she was lying. Mum always knew. But Jasmine knew things too. She knew that fear had laced her mother’s voice when she’d spoken to her on the phone. And it was the same fear that had stalked Barrowmore since the murders.

  Candice, walking alongside Jasmine, went on. “I mean I wished, like, she was dead, like. Not Italy’s mum, like, but Italy, ‘cause she’s been getting off with Tyler, like, and I’ve been sick, Jasmine, really sick with it.”

  “You can’t wish people dead, Candice.”

  “Why not, babe?”

  “You can’t.”

  “I’m cold. Can I get your top, babe? Till tomorrow.”

  Jasmine took off her hoodie. She had a thick jumper underneath that kept the cold at bay. As she handed over her hoodie, Candice, taking it, said, “You think it’s Jack the Ripper?”

  Jasmine furrowed her brow. “What?”

  “Like, someone said they found his knife or something. Found Jack the Rippers knife.

  They said, like, he was reincarnated or something. He’s come back from the dead. I mean, he killed . . . I mean, he killed your auntie, yeah? He killed her ages ago.”

  Jasmine shivered. She felt cold all over. She quickened her pace. Her head filled with pictures, and she tried to shut them out, but they had stained her mind. They made her sick. They made her scared. They made her cry but now she kept the tears at bay, biting her lip.

  “Why are you walking so fast, man?” said Candice.

  Jasmine nearly said, Because I’m trying to get away from the pictures in my head of someone cutting my aunt open and pulling out her guts.

  But she said nothing. She held her breath. The images reeled, like a film. It was worse than Saw and worse than Hostel. Jasmine had seen both those films at Candice’s place. Candice’s big brother had them on DVD. They were horrible films, but the showreel in her head right now made those movies seem like Disney.

  “Are you coming to tae kwon do tonight?” said Candice. “Cause I don’t think Tyler’s going, like, as he’s distressed about Italy’s mum, so I don’t think I’ll go neither, and maybe I’ll go round to Tyler’s, see if he’s okay. You think I should do that?”

  “I’ve got to go, Candice,” said Jasmine, wanting to run.

  The pictures in her head were clearer than they’d ever been. She’d always seen them, mostly as if through gauze. But in the past few days, it was like normal TV suddenly becoming HDTV. And even 3D TV. Everything became clearer. The blood was redder. The guts were wetter. The knife was sharper. The screams were louder. And Aunt Rachel was screaming Jasmine’s name, begging her niece, who was unborn when she was murdered, to save her from the Ripper.

  She left Candice gawping near the stairwell on Monsell House and raced up the high rise. She was in a panic, the pictures in her head just not fading. And as she ran along the walkway towards her front door, she failed to see the man blocking her path until the very last moment.

  And by then it was too late.

  Chapter 56

  THE TASTE OF POWER

  Half an hour after she’d been snatched, she was dead. Assaulted first, then strangled.

  After doing what he did, Hallam left her body on the stairwell of the seventh story, the floor where she’d lived.
Before leaving her, he’d poured a can of red emulsion paint over the body in an attempt to destroy any forensic evidence. It looked bizarre, twisted and dead, soaked in paint that drizzled down the stairs. Hallam’s instinct would have been to hide the corpse. But Jack said, “Leave it somewhere for the world to find. Killing’s no good if no one knows about it. It’s the fear that spreads after a murder that’s the real gift, not the murder itself.”

  Hallam would probably disagree. The murder had been a great relief to him. And the assault before it. The desires he unleashed on the girl had been simmering in him since adolescence. Now, scuttling away from the scene, he was coated in sweat and shuddering with excitement.

  So this was what killing was like. This was what power tasted of. He liked it. He liked it a lot. He felt fulfilled at last. After an age of being nothing, nobody, now he was something, someone.

  He hurried back to his flat, clutching to his chest what he’d taken from the girl.

  “Bring a gift,” Jack had told him. “Something warm.”

  Reaching his door, his heart thumping, he began to understand what Jack had meant when he said the dread caused by a killing was the true prize.

  The girl’s murder would send shockwaves through Barrowmore. In many ways it was worse than the slaughter in the lock-up and the throwing to her death of Terri Slater. It was worse because the victim was a child. Eleven or twelve. The tragedy would result in more outrage and horror. It would send parents into a frenzy.

  He entered his flat, but before shutting the door, he peeked out at Barrowmore.

  Hallam could already sense the alarm leaching through the streets.

  Fifteen minutes later, he lay in the bath. The radio was on, but his focus was elsewhere. He was replaying the attack while lathering soap on his fat belly.

  It had been the first time Hallam had attacked a child since he attempted to kidnap Tash Hanbury nearly twenty years before.

  That attempt failed.

  He had her all lined up. He had his hood up over his head. Dark glasses hid his eyes. His fingers flexed inside his leather gloves. He was ready.

  She was walking home from the youth club. It was 9:00 pm. She was ten and alone. But Tash was Roy Hanbury’s daughter. No one would dare touch her. No one except for a desperate, dangerous pervert whose desires outweighed his personal safety.

  She was so pretty. He’d rough her during the assault, and then he’d strangle her.

  He’d grabbed her from behind, lifting her off her feet, one hand clamped over her mouth. The plan was to drag her into the alley and punch her lights out and then do what he needed to do.

  But as he was dragging her into the darkness, someone attacked him. Threw punches at him and cursed him, calling him a “fucking pervert” and saying, “I’m going to cut off your balls and make you eat them.”

  Hallam had to let Tash go, and he reeled, trying to get away from the assault. He remembered being scared. He hated being hurt. So many bullies at school had wounded him, and pain was terrifying.

  He whimpered and begged as his attacker pummeled him. A fist caught him under the eye. He felt a sharp pain. He’d been cut. Blood ran down his cheeks. He cried out, and an adrenaline surge gave him a bit of extra strength. He got loose and spun away from the pasting, and his assailant lost his balance because he was so angry.

  As he ran away, Hallam looked over his shoulder.

  He saw a youth bend over Tash and help her to her feet. The boy was about fourteen or fifteen. When he looked up, Hallam had a good look at his face, which made him turn away and quicken his pace. The youths face imprinted itself on Hallam’s mind. And in the next few months and years he saw it many more times. During those times he witnessed what the youth was capable of doing. It made him glad that he ran away. It made him glad that Charlie Faultless never laid into him properly.

  Now, twenty years on, full circle from the attempted attack on Tash Hanbury, Hallam blew air out his cheeks.

  The bathwater cooled. The next door neighbor played hip-hop loudly. The radio reported financial collapse.

  Hallam shut his eyes. For the first time in his life, he felt strong.

  Chapter 57

  FIFTEEN YEARS OF HATE

  The first thing he remembered was the glare of a powerful light forcing him to squint.

  The second thing he remembered was the pain—from the pulsing ache in his skull to the searing fire in his chest, shoulders, and arms.

  His eyes were shut, and the light made him shut them tighter.

  He thought, I’m dead and I’m going towards the light.

  He kept his eyes closed. Opening them and seeing where he was headed scared him. And scared was something he rarely felt.

  But he wanted to look. He opened his eyes. They were sticky, and he had to blink away the sleep. He squinted, the big white light right in his face.

  Am I here? he thought. Is this it?

  “Here he is, the bastard,” said a voice. “Waking up, more’s the pity. You should’ve stayed sleeping, Faultless.”

  Faultless? He wondered. Who’s—

  And then he came fully awake, shaking his head. It was like birth—a violent, rapid, agonizing casting out. He jerked, his body stiffening. He gasped, the pain levels increasing.

  “Take that away for now, Ryan,” said another voice, deeper, made craggy by cigarettes.

  The light angled away from his eyes, and he saw where he was. A low-ceilinged room. No windows. Damp drizzling down the walls. A single light bulb meshed in wire. The floor was wooden. It creaked as people trod on it.

  His sense of smell reactivated, and his nose filled with the musty odor of somewhere old, somewhere without light and air. The reek of tobacco also saturated the atmosphere.

  Then he became aware of his condition. He looked up. Two chains hung from two rusty rings pinned into the ceiling. Faultless’s wrists were cuffed to the chains. He’d been stripped to his boxer shorts. Sweat and blood soaked his torso. The pain in his shoulders was volcanic. He gritted his teeth and groaned.

  And then he clocked his captors.

  Three of them. Two he recognized from the car. A young bloke, early twenties. Short in stature, but built hard and mean. He moved a video camera and tripod across the room. The light from the camera, which had moments ago blinded Faultless, now showed him more of his prison.

  Four wooden steps led up to up a door. It was barred and padlocked. No way out.

  The second guy was the black. The one who’d smashed him across the head with the baseball bat. He brandished it now, letting it swing menacingly next to his leg.

  The third man came into view, moving into Faultless’s eye line.

  It took a few seconds, but the years peeled away from the man’s face.

  “Graveney,” said Faultless.

  “You fucking, murdering bastard,” said Graveney. “You’ve made a big mistake coming back. You should’ve stayed exiled, son.”

  “I was missing your friendly face, Allan. Just had to come home.”

  Graveney smiled, but only his mouth moved. His eyes remained cold and steady.

  “That’s nice,” he said. “Since you missed it so much, it can be the last face you see.”

  Graveney clutched Faultless’s jaws and squeezed. Rage twisted his face. Spit came from between his gritted teeth. He went dark red.

  He said, “My hate for you has been brewing fifteen years, Faultless. You made a bad mistake killing my brother. You know there was a truce. But you made an even worse mistake killing him, because he was innocent.”

  He snapped his hand away.

  Faultless flexed his jaw. It hurt, but he just added the pain to the already-mounting agony he was feeling.

  He said, “I never put Tony down as an innocent, myself.”

  Graveney shuddered with wrath. He punched Faultless in the ribs. The air
was knocked out of him. Pins and needles surged up his flank. He felt his left side go dead, all the nerves in there locked up. Then the feeling in his body returned and revealed yet another new pain.

  He coughed, every breath he took hurting his ribs.

  “Before this is done, you’ll beg for mercy,” said Graveney. “And you’ll say sorry a thousand times for killing my brother. You’ll say sorry till you can’t speak no more, Faultless. And you know what, son?”

  “What, mate?”

  “It’ll make no difference, because you’re going to die, and it’s going to be long and very painful.” Eyes fixed on Faultless, he gestured with his hand as if he were beckoning a dog.

  The younger thug appeared again, carrying the camera and tripod.

  Graveney said, “This is my youngest, Ryan.”

  “Lovely to meet you, junior,” said Faultless.

  “Shut up, bitch,” said Ryan, drenching Faultless in spit.

  “Set it up,” Graveney told his son, and while the younger man fixed the tripod and adjusted the camera, his dad went on. “It’s going to be recorded for posterity, your death, Faultless.”

  “Nice, make sure you send the royalties check to Roy Hanbury. He’ll want to know what you’ve done.”

  “You think Hanbury scares me? Hanbury’s gone good, Faultless. He’s gone all decent, now. He ain’t got evil in him no more.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  “Shut it,” said Graveney and then to Ryan, “Is it ready?”

  The camera’s light shone into Faultless’s eyes again. He squinted and turned his head away.

  Graveney said, “Buckley, fire it up.”

  Faultless looked at the big black guy as he crouched over a sports bag. He stood and turned, goggles resting on his forehead. He carried a handheld butane blowlamp.

  Faultless grimaced. Fear wrenched his stomach.

  Buckley grinned, and his white teeth stood out against his black face.

  Graveney flicked a Zippo lighter and held it to the lamp, and a tongue of blue fire jutted from the torch.