The Place That Never Existed

by Jim Ody

  It’s not long before she has a response.

  Bigman84: Hey babe, what’s shaking?

  Sexygrl90: Nuthin, cept these breasts, Honey!

  Bigman84: Send me a pic?!

  Sexygrl90: I might just do that. X

  Jez

  This is un-fuckin’-believable! Here I am about to let my vlog fans know of my DJ-ing exploits from the Wedding-of-the-Year the day before yesterday, and this cute girl from Bournemouth is already messaging me. A bit early for a booty call, but hey! I guess this is what that David Ghetto bloke, or whatever his name is, must feel like. One night you are up there spinning the old ones and twos, with the ladies grinning and shaking their money-makers at you, and the next minute you are batting away all of their advances. Woman cannot resist the charms of a DJ. It must be something to do with knob-twiddling, rhythm, and beats.

  I know I’ve got to play it cool with her, so I’m channeling all of my “Christian Slater meets Bradley Cooper meets whoever the girls get their panties in a wad over nowadays” persona.

  The wife is out with her sister on a bloody retreat someplace. Hairy-pit-ville, Hugfest, veggieland, or some such. She will more than likely come back a lesbian. Ha ha! Every cloud and all that!

  Okay, now what to write back:

  Bigman84: My DJ-ing the night before last was on it! You coulda shaken them then!

  Sexygrl90: How was it? Your sister have a good wed?

  Bigman84: Yep. Looked like a princess!

  Sexygrl90: OMG! Sounds wonderful! Where she honeymooning?

  Bigman84: Devon…

  Sexygrl90

  She couldn’t believe it. This was almost too easy. All she had to do was talk about boobs and jiggling around, and then she could ask whatever question she wanted to. Like a small obedient child, he would respond without thinking about the question or answer and then immediately forget both. Talk about perfection, she thought.

  Sexygrl90: Devon, wow! A fancy hotel on the beach?

  Bigman84: IDK. Not that fancy! Yeah, I was busting out some tunes til the AM. Peeps didn’t want to leave!

  Shit, she thought, he was so self-centred he was bringing the conversation right back to himself again. This was going to be harder than she thought.

  Sexygrl90: LOL! Sounds cool. I hope the happy couple have a DJ hotel!

  Bigman84: Unlikely. They’re in the middle of nowhere and staying in some cabin.

  Sexygirl90: LMAO. What town? Is it near Plymouth?

  Jez

  There was something niggling inside Jez’s head. Sometimes it was a conscience, other times it was a social mishap that he may’ve committed. This was something else. It felt sinister and odd, and a little bit like intuition, but that was something only women had, wasn’t it?

  Whatever it was, he didn’t like it.

  Bigman84: Yeah, some place around there.

  Sexygrl90: Let me know and we could check it out!

  Jez wasn’t sure how to take this. He paused and looked at the flashing cursor begging him to write a response.

  Bigman84: Really? I’ll find out for you.

  Sexygrl90: Then I might send a pic! XX

  Jez was a sucker for kisses. He looked at the dark-tanned skin of her profile picture. His eyes roamed down her fit, shapely back to the large buttocks, with the mere hint of a thong bikini as an afterthought. He imagined himself underneath her and was momentarily side-tracked.

  Jez wasn’t quite as naïve and stupid as others gave him credit for. After sending her back a winking Emoji, he opened up his favourite search engine and, with reluctance, began to do what he really didn’t want to do.

  Find out exactly who Sexygrl90 was.

  He knew she was not the girl in the picture. There was no way Bournemouth had that much sun, and this girl had a tan that was heritage and not from a bottle or a sun bed. Perhaps he was cynical, and she had come to England travelling or with her parents, but…well, this was more than likely not the case. The beaches in her pictures were not of these shores, and like the sea, it all seemed just a little bit fishy.

  First he dragged the profile picture to be searched on the web. It came back with a model from Brazil called Gabrielle Herriou. She had her own website, which proved distracting for the next twenty minutes. For a while he forgot what he was doing. He saved the page in his favourites, should he need to check out the pictures again. Specifically the ones where she had absentmindedly lost her bikini and was laid out in the sun, in what could be described as a stress signal of arms and legs stretched out in an X-marks-the-spot pose. He found himself lost again in a fantasy of Robin-Sin Grew-So and his Girl-Friday. He smiled at that. That was a smutty movie waiting to be made.

  It was unlikely this was the girl he had been speaking to.

  Next he copied her user ID and put it into a social media search engine.

  He wasn’t expecting the name Gabrielle Herriou to come back. And it didn’t.

  But the name that returned suddenly stopped him dead in his tracks. The blood drained from his face.

  He had to reach his sister Debbie now. Trouble was on its way.

  THE PLACE THAT NEVER EXISTED

  Chapter Twelve

  D ebbie was deep asleep when she felt a brush against her cheek. It must be well into the night, she thought, unwilling to open her eyes. They had got in last night from taking Benji home and cried together whilst drinking half a bottle of wine. It was always the same in life. You felt sad so you drank wine, but that only ever made her feel even more emotional and sent her nose-diving into sadness.

  They’d gone up to bed and read for a while; Paul with a Tim Weaver novel, and her with the new Leigh Russell book—both escaping the past through other people’s well-written fiction, while still remaining close together. It was perfect—again.

  But the gentle touch pulled her from semi to fully conscious. A bright light flashed and then disappeared, making her open her eyes to see exactly what Paul was up to. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d decided to wake her up for some sexual activity.

  However, when she opened her eyes, she saw he was facing the other way, and when she sat up and looked over him, she found he was fast asleep.

  Thinking perhaps she’d been half asleep, she got out of bed and went to the toilet, now seeing that the time was a little after three. Paul still remained fast asleep, his breathing long and deep.

  She went back to bed and forgot all about it.

  “Good morning, sunshine,” he said as she opened her eyes. It was now obvious it was morning. A gap in the thin curtains let in a huge bright beam of light.

  “Hey,” she replied.

  “We have a bit of a problem,” he said, although the tone suggested it probably wasn’t. He was trying to suppress a laugh.

  “We do?”

  “We do. No coffee. Of all of the things to forget, I only went and forgot the coffee!”

  “What an idiot I married.” She laughed, and then a sly grin appeared. “Why don’t you ask your new mate?”

  “What, Robin?”

  She nodded and pointed downstairs.

  “On the CB radio?”

  She beamed and nodded again. “It’s the least he could do, seeing that he got an eyeful of my tits!”

  “For them beauties, I would expect breakfast, too, you know!”

  And for some reason this all seemed like a really good idea. Paul went down and got out the CB radio. He had never touched one before and spent a little time playing with the handset like he was a policeman in an American cop show. He turned it on and made sure it was on channel thirteen. He had to admit it was slightly awkward. There was a cool aspect to it, but mostly it just felt strange.

  He pressed the button of the handset and tried to remember how you start, gave up, and took his finger off the button. “What do I say?” he said as Debbie walked down in her grey vest and matching knickers. That was never going to help him concentrate.

  “Breaker, breaker. That’s what they did in that truck movie Conv
oy. It’s like saying ‘hello’ or something.”

  He tried again. “Breaker, breaker, Robin, are you out there?” He held up his other hand and shrugged, feeling like a complete novice. It was less than halfhearted, and he was about to give up on it.

  And then a voice came back. “Come again?”

  “Uh, Robin? Is that you?”

  “No Robin here. What’s your handle, good buddy?” the voice said. It sounded a lot like Robin.

  “Handle? Uh, yeah, right. This here’s G-Ranger, come on, er, Red Bear, ya got ya ears on?” He was now spouting lines from Convoy himself. Careful not to add things like, back door and bear in the air.

  “That’s a ten-four, good buddy.”

  “Hey, Red Bear, we have a situation here? We need some coffee, er, over!”

  There was a beat of a pause before they heard back. “Fer sure, that’s a ten-four. You need a cup of mud for you and the First Sergeant?”

  “Er, copy that.”

  “Ten-four, I’m going like a raped ape. Two forty-weights in a short, G-Ranger. I’m out.”

  “Ten, er, four, over and out!” Paul stood there staring at the handset.

  Debbie laughed, “That was fucking surreal, Rubber Duck!”

  “I literally have no idea what he just said, nor what I just ordered.”

  “Probably two midget prostitutes and a primate! That was another language.”

  “Well, foxy lady, unless you want old Red Bear getting his eyes on you, I suggest you covering up, your, er, blonde—”

  “Okay, Kris Kristofferson, I get the idea! Go and put some bacon and eggs on before your good buddy turns up in his eighteen-wheeler.”

  It was twenty minutes later before there was a knock at the door. Paul opened it to a beaming grin of Robin, stood proud with a tray of coffee cups and some muffins.

  “Didn’t I tell you how good the old CB was for emergencies, huh?”

  “That you did, Red Bear, that you did.”

  Just as Paul went to pick up one of the coffees, Robin swung away from him. “Whoa there, cowboy, we don’t go around spouting off our handles when we are on a meet and greet, yeah?”

  “Huh?” was all Paul said, still a little unsure of things.

  “Well, you see it is like this.” He leaned in close like it was some secret plan that could bring down the world should it get out. “On the CB, I am Red Bear.” He said his handle through gritted teeth like he was trying to disguise it without it being totally incomprehensible. “But face-to-face, you can call me Robin or V.”

  “I think I need to write this down.” Paul grinned but quickly noticed that Robin was looking very serious.

  “Negative to that, G-Man. When we write things down, we invite trouble into our lives. You like trouble?”

  Although slightly amused by this strange guy, Paul shook his head. “Negative, V. Trouble I do not like one bit.” There was suddenly the sound of Debbie trying to stifle a giggle from upstairs, which she then turned into a fake cough.

  “Well, trouble has a way of finding you around here, G-Man.” He put the coffees down on the side where the CB was. He had brought his own which was nice, depending on how seriously you took him. Robin was wearing a blue-and-white flannel shirt, the sort worn by Canadian lumberjacks or early ’90s rock bands. He sported a greasy-looking backwards baseball cap, and his beard looked like it might have been combed. Paul wondered whether the excitement of CB contact had anything to do with this.

  “So, what have you lovebirds got planned for today then?” he said, sitting down and making himself at home.

  “I don’t know. We thought that we might go for a walk. Check out the sights around here. Right, Debs?” Paul said as Debbie made her way down the stairs. She was wearing shorts, a vest, and shirt. Her idea of looking “outdoorsy”.

  She nodded.

  Robin smiled. “Well, I don’t know what your idea of sights may be, but there ain’t much to offer in these parts no more.” He took a sip and looked long and hard out the window. Paul threw Debbie a quick glance, which included a frown and an unspoken thought transfer of, here we go.

  Robin carried on. “Ya see, this used to be a little fishing town, and while it was never full of money, it lived with the love of a community’s beating heart. Everyone had just enough money to live on, and there weren’t no need for nothin’ more, ya know?”

  Paul encouraged him with a nod, and Debbie began to eat one of the muffins. She could multitask.

  “But I don’t know where it all went wrong, ta tell you tha truth.” He looked back at both of them. “Rich people moved in with their fancy ways and their fancy things…but it wasn’t just that. The youngsters—and me included—saw what was happening outside of this town, and we all wanted to be a part of it. So the want to be what your father was soon became a thing of nostalgia. If it wasn’t people moving away, it was people disappearing…”

  “People disappearing?” Paul repeated. “What, into thin air?”

  “Might as well have been.” Robin sighed and then sat up suddenly. “Look, all I know is a lot of stories, rumours, and hearsay. I can’t tell you this is the God’s-honest truth, but over the past few years, people—and by people I mainly mean young folk—have disappeared. But then they’ve turned up dead. Death by misadventure, all of them, some say suspicious.”

  Paul was intrigued. “Suspicious? How so?”

  “Well, I was coming to that. One lad was blown off the cliff, but he was a fisherman, used to being on the trawlers in all kinds of weathers, the notion that he would be swept off the cliff, when he’d never once fallen overboard on his boat, is an example of a number of strange deaths.”

  “What about the postmortems? What do the police say?” Debbie then said.

  Robin lifted his hat, smoothed his red hair, and replaced it. It wasn’t clear which was more greasy, his hat or his hair. “As far as I know there were never any postmortems, and rumour has it this was mainly because there were never any bodies. It’s a police cover-up. Plain and simple.”

  “Really? Police cover-up? This sounds like some American drama on HBO. We don’t have small-town cops running towns willy-nilly. Surely they fall under what, Devon & Cornwall Police?”

  Robin nodded. “Yes, but there is still a police station here, and think about it. If something was going on, then how would the Plymouth boys know?”

  “It just seems a little…er…” Debbie searched for the words to finish her sentence.

  “Far-fetched,” Paul said.

  Robin had just picked up a muffin and swung it back and forth at them both with a grinning gesture. “Cute,” he said, suddenly distracted. “You finish each other’s sentences!”

  Debbie and Paul looked at each and smiled. “We got married the day before yesterday,” Paul said.

  “Ah, that makes sense as to the living porno I walked in on!” Robin laughed. Then he quickly added, “Look, pay me no mind. These are stories that I shouldn’t really be saying. Head off down the track there, and it takes you through beautiful woods, where there is a small lake. You know, the weather as it is at the moment you could swim in it.

  “If you follow it further down, it will take you past the old abandoned Dudley House and onto the coastal path. From there, you will see the wonderful view of the sea, and then it will take you down to the beach and along to the town. You can then follow it back up the road and do a full circuit all the way back here.”

  “How long would that take, do you think?” Paul asked.

  Robin puffed out his cheeks as if calculating. “Hour or two, I reckon.”

  “And what was that about the abandoned house?”

  Robin was already shaking his head. “You don’t want to stop there. Strange things go on there. Owned by a killer. Most people just pretend it never existed.”

  Paul and Debbie threw a quick glance at each other.

  “Not worth looking around?”

  Robin was waving his hands frantically at that. “I like you people. So st
ay away from it. I’ve heard of people planning to go there. And they never returned.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. It’s an evil place.”

  Paul nodded to that. And then tried to lighten the mood. “Thanks for the coffee and muffins, anyway.”

  “I told ya that the old CB would come in handy, yeah?”

  “You sure did.”

  Robin took another large swig of his coffee. They munched in silence for a good minute before Paul said, “So what are the police covering up?”

  Robin shrugged. “Hard to tell. They have a harbour here which has a history of smuggling…” He looked like he was wrestling with something in his mind.

  “What is it?” Paul asked.

  “Nothing really. I was told by someone that we might be on top of a mine.”

  “Goldmine?” Debbie said, but Robin shook his head.

  “Silver mine,” he said.

  “That worth killing for?” Paul said but instantly realised that anything that you could get for free and sell at a profit was enough motive for murder.

  “It will make you money.”

  They munched the rest of the muffins and drank up the coffee.

  “How much do I owe you?” Paul asked.

  Debbie made a move to get up. “Shit, yeah, sorry we haven’t paid you!”

  Robin waved away their talk and shook his head. “Consider it a belated wedding present, kids!” He got up and made a move to leave.

  “Well, I had better get going now, but if you need anything.” He pointed to the CB.

  “I’ll holler!”

  Robin laughed. “Yeah, you do that, G-Man. You do that.”

  And off he went.

  THE PLACE THAT NEVER EXISTED

  Chapter Thirteen

  T he sound of the kettle and mugs crashing against themselves awoke Ginny. She had been dreaming about a faceless guy that had come to her rescue from an unknown horror, as was the usual vagueness of dreams. Where the clarity of vision was non-existent, her senses of feelings had been heightened, bringing forth an overwhelming passion that was still radiating over her now, even fully awake.