The Place That Never Existed

by Jim Ody

  I believe this is what they call a holiday.

  The cove had been nice, and the road down to it must’ve put a lot of people off as there were just a couple of cars and a white-and-orange VW camper van—one of those classic ones.

  They’d sat on the beach, looking out at the sea. They’d held hands, cuddled, and kissed. It was so nice to be away from everything, watching ships on the horizon and thinking about what it would be like if you could escape to this place whenever you felt like it. The drab grey buildings of Swindon on a drizzly winter day could be depressive, and you had to wonder whether your mood would be uplifted slightly if you were sat on the beach with an umbrella looking at the violent waves crash as the frowning clouds did battle above.

  Debbie had tried Jez again a couple of times but was still unable to get through. I mean, seriously, how do the locals cope without any sort of mobile connection? she thought, and they had both laughed at that.

  “This is nice,” Debbie said, looking at her wedding ring again. “I am so happy.”

  Paul smiled at her. “It’s not the Caribbean, but it’s not bad.”

  “Apart from that spooky old house.”

  “Because of the spooky house!” She playfully hit him, but he pulled her close again, and they shared another gentle tender kiss.

  An hour or so later, they walked back to the car, noting that the VW van was gone, and made their way back up the rabbit warren of roads to join with the main road—or rather, a road with two lanes.

  For a few minutes, they both hummed along to Alien Ant Farm’s cover of the Michael Jackson song Smooth Criminal. Paul was making chugging guitar sounds, and Debbie was doing the high-pitched Ow! noises, albeit minus the simultaneous fist in the air and crotch grab. This move was hard in the passenger seat of a car, even in a Jeep.

  “What do you think about later?” Debbie said as they got to the instrumental part.

  “What, sex-wise?”

  She looked at him, her head slightly turned, and he knew that she was being serious.

  “Well, there is a chance this is all nothing, right? We could all be adding little bits of our experiences together, along with some stories and legends that Zara—”

  “Dhara.”

  “Yes, Dhara has dug up. Maybe we all want to believe—”

  “What do you believe? Seriously?” Debbie turned down the music slightly. They were always honest with each other, even if the other person didn’t want to hear what they had to say.

  “I don’t believe in ghosts or evil spirits. I believe in evil and greedy people that will go to great lengths to make money, whether that’s to make up a legend or whatever…I just don’t know.”

  “What about that scream today and the body under the sheet?” Debbie said.

  “We assumed it was a body, and it might have been, but it might also have been something else. Look, I’m happy to go along with Dhara tonight, if that’s what she wants. And maybe we just hang around outside as lookout while she checks it out, but we need to be careful that we are not drawn into something that we could get arrested for.”

  “I know, but don’t you want a little adventure?”

  “When I’m at work in a three-hour meeting then yes, I would love some adventure and excitement, but out in the middle of nowhere, breaking into houses that people keep disappearing from, that seems to be a little more on the foolish side to me.”

  “Okay, let’s go along and play it by ear, yeah?”

  “I guess so.” They were now heading down the lane towards their lodge. Paul was tapping the steering wheel to Chazz Valentine’s great catchy punk song “The Brightest Star”. That always made him feel happy.

  “Maybe when we get back we can release the tension in each other. If you play your cards right, then perhaps I’ll even do that…Wait! Is that Jez’s car?”

  It was Jez’s car. The mini with dents like a steel drum sat sideways, taking up most of the drive—the way Jez usually parked.

  Debbie checked her phone but saw nothing. What was so important that he would come all the way here on her honeymoon?

  “Jez?” she called, getting out of the car and walking towards his. As she got closer, she saw he wasn’t in there.

  Paul walked up to the front door and opened it. He saw a note on the floor. Ah-ha! he thought and opened it.

  We saw you break into the house.

  We are watching you. You are not safe. Leave now.

  For a second, Paul thought about stuffing the note in his pocket. This was not a note from Jez, that was obvious. His would’ve tried to be amusing, missing the mark completely but trying nevertheless.

  “Debs, you’d better see this,” Paul said, walking over to her with the note held high in his thumb and forefinger.

  The blood drained from Debbie’s face as she read the words on the note. “But we didn’t break in!” she said defiantly. “The door was open!”

  “We did trespass though. That said, we thought the house was abandoned…” Paul took a deep breath. His head began to pound. “I am not going to cut short our honeymoon for anyone! They can go fuck themselves!”

  Debbie stepped into his arms, and they held each other closely.

  It was at that point that a car pulled up into the driveway.

  THE PLACE THAT NEVER EXISTED

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  S am had said she would be back by now. It was true Ginny didn’t always know where she was, but tonight they’d planned to go and have a meal and then get right royally pissed. All too often, they lived their separate lives busy doing whatever they were doing, and so it was times like this Ginny enjoyed. Her days were often lonely, so she lived for these debauched moments where she could forget herself and her responsibilities of life and pretend she was young again.

  The last time—which was almost a month ago—had been a real blast. It was almost a flash of her youth where the two of them went out and flirted shamelessly with men. Sam had grabbed a kiss or two with a couple of guys poles apart in desirability, and Ginny had attracted but a fleeting glance and a sloppy one-liner from a divorcee that was playing the percentages game and asking everyone that looked vaguely female, and possibly single, for some sort of liaison with promises of satisfaction. However, a bucketful of Plymouth gin, a murderous karaoke spree, and some half-nibbled kebab on the way home turned into forgotten hours, and at some point, they’d both passed out half naked and cuddling like a pair of teenagers.

  The next day, they had barely grabbed on dressing gowns before efficiently putting together a fry-up in perfect unison, with pounding heads, lost voices, and aching limbs before snuggling on the sofa and watching romance-laden movies, Blue Crush and Love Actually. They were together, but separately sharing a personal romantic fantasy that more than likely neither would experience.

  Ginny glanced at her watch and looked down at Bolan. He opened an eye sensing she was moving, cocked his head ever so slightly, and raised an eyebrow in that usual comical manner of his.

  “You want to go for a walk, boy?” she said and smirked as the dog sprung to life from docile lethargy to sprung-loaded fur ball of energy in a rapid morph of opposites. Earlier, after the visit to the police station, the walk had been brisk around the harbour and back again, so Bolan was definitely in need of a run out.

  She thought she would walk down to the town, then up and around the clifftops and back towards the lodge. She would see whether or not Sam was around and check on her guests at the same time. She scribbled a note to Sam, just in case she came in as soon as Ginny was out of sight.

  As she walked towards the front door, she suddenly realised something else. She wasn’t just going to walk Bolan or check down the village or even check on the lodge. She was going to walk towards the house.

  She needed to get close to it and check it out for herself. As a police officer, you have a naturally inquisitive nature. You need to know if something is going on in your own area. There is always a want and need to do the right thing, and some
thing was just not adding up. Things were being brushed under the carpet, deliberately overlooked.

  In Plymouth, drugs had been a big issue. A mixture of unemployment, a lack of opportunity, and low income had aided the poor choices made by some. It only took a matter of time for either a natural spiral-out-of-control or for those with money and influence to prey on the weak and use them as the first level of crime. The degenerate pawns were being played by others for their greater gain, using them as a buffer against the law and decreasing their risk of being caught. Whenever you lived in a port, you had a means to import and export. Ginny was sure that this was possibly all down to drugs. It would be too obvious if there were cars or large items being imported or exported. Unidentified vans and lorries had not been seen recently, aside from the one black van registered to none other than one Alfred Prince—otherwise known as the mayor.

  It didn’t take a genius to work out that the mayor had the power to control what came and left the harbour. Such a green light for trafficking, and using a single house in the middle of nowhere, could mean drugs or it could be something else just as bad if not worse. A far-fetched theory could be down to some Islamic related smuggling, weaponry and firearms in or wannabe extremists going out. Or, it could be women being smuggled in or out. The sex-slave industry is massive even in this day and age, predominately attached to but not exclusive to Eastern Europe. Kidnapping them is usually the first stage, before getting them hooked on drugs and turning them into empty and desperate vessels.

  What better place to house them through addiction before smuggling them off to Russia, Romania, or Bulgaria? It would also explain the disappearances, wouldn’t it? She thought, getting angrier by the second.

  There was something almost clever in the Scooby-Doo-esque villain’s thought process: create a legend based upon history to scare away snoopers while an underlining business of criminal activity fell under the radar.

  She thought about swinging by Bobby’s house to see what he thought about all this. He was a good guy, and okay, maybe some money was being passed over to him, but that was Don’s influence, telling him not to ask too many questions. What if he knew what was really happening, people he knew being taken and forced into addiction and a depraved lifestyle. She needed someone still in law enforcement to help bring this whole thing down.

  How could they be so blind?

  THE PLACE THAT NEVER EXISTED

  Chapter Forty

  T he mouth of the cave seemed inviting. Perhaps this was because of what it represented to him. He walked in with the large bag over his shoulder and began the long walk.

  This whole escapade had been a complete and utter surprise. Normally, his projects were stealthy reconnaissance missions conducted over a period of months or years. It was perfectly possible to live amongst people completely undetected, accepted as just another living soul going about their day to day business.

  But something went wrong in the first few days.

  She had been caught.

  She had been held there in that house now for a number of months. For the most part, she was perfectly safe. Or she was until they started to remove her.

  Huntswood Cove was a perfect location, having fallen through the grid for many forms of communication, but there was something else about the place. And it was more than likely the reason why there was such a black spot. Some other energy was prevalent there. Not even their high-tech scientific research was able to fully understand what or where the energy source was from, but it appeared to centre on the house.

  Today, he’d seen them remove her in the black van. She had returned later distressed. This mission was filled with many firsts, and at times it was hard to establish just how successful this would turn out to be.

  He knew it would never be simple. They had been raised to know that in order to survive, it was imperative they understood the world around them.

  She had been the one to talk him into it. She was the one to explain what this meant to him and the rest of them. This was their mission, and there was no room for failure.

  He pushed on. He badly wanted to see her, but he had something more important he had to do.

  He smiled as he saw the broken arrow and sensed the anguish that was held captive within the stone walls. Feelings trapped for a lifetime.

  When he saw the body laid out, he felt nothing. This was just the way life was. He knew this better than most.

  The people around here acted strangely, it was an odd phenomenon. The mere hint of something different and strange had not had the authorities alerted but had instead created a secrecy between a small group—an important group, that in an almost medieval way had taken it upon themselves to make, unknown, a decision for and on behalf of the majority that could have catastrophic consequences. There was a Lord Of The Flies mentality of self-preservation overruling morality that was more about desperation than it was about the good of mankind. It could be likened to a game of musical chairs and an act of pushing someone over as the music stops and two of you go for the last available chair.

  He stepped over the body and towards the large furnace that had once heated the house from the bottom up using a large chimney and copper pipes that pumped the water heated by the furnace around the building.

  He was most interested in the chimney that started here and went vertically up and out of the top of the house. He attached the end tube with the bright bulb and slowly built the cylindrical tubes up underneath until there was just the battery pack left at the bottom, and the tubes led up to the beacon at the top.

  He went to turn the battery on which would shoot up the light into the night’s sky but got distracted.

  He had to see her.

  He got up and walked towards the light which immediately flashed off.

  It was like a slight buzz in his ears that told him she was close. He looked up and saw the woman. He stood there paralysed with fear and completely transfixed by her…

  THE PLACE THAT NEVER EXISTED

  Chapter Forty-One

  J ust when you think things cannot get any worse, invariably they do. Lady Luck looks down upon you with pure hatred and decides to mix things up a bit.

  The white Ford Fiesta drove in slowly and stopped. The door opened and out she got.

  In a slight panic, Paul held a protective hand out to Debbie. “Debs, stay in the house. She’s here!”

  Debbie walked out to the porch. “What? What the fuck is she doing here?”

  “Debs, just go back inside. You might want to get the phone, or even that bloody CB!”

  Christina smoothed her hands down her thighs and looked up at him in a way she’d done a million times before. It was oddly captivating. He’d been on the end of those looks—had even encouraged them before—but everything about it was wrong. What was her problem?

  He didn’t even realise at first, but his hands were out defensively towards her. The cat had got his tongue as words clogged deep inside his mouth and his mind became hazy. In front of him was a woman he’d once dearly loved—one that at one point in his life he thought would be the only one for him, but now his wife was behind him more than likely beside herself, and this woman in front of him was mentally sick. The doctors had said so, and even the police had warned him that he should keep his distance. He still felt sorry for her. It was so hard not to.

  “Pauly, it’s okay. I’m here now,” she said, walking closer. “We’re here now. Little Susie has missed you so much.”

  “Look, Chrissy, you can’t be here, right? This is my honeymoon!”

  “Shhh!” she said, her finger on her lips. “Don’t say that. You wanted me to come, didn’t you? You knew I would rescue you from her. Your little plan worked, okay?” She paused, her voice faltering slightly. “You wanted to make me jealous, huh? I see that now. It worked, okay? I want you with me and Susie—the family that we should be!”

  “No, you have to go.”

  She shook her head almost in slow motion, held out her hand, and said, �
��It’s okay. Come quickly, and she’ll never know! We can be gone before she comes back out.”

  “No!” Paul spoke strongly. “That is not going to happen. Ever.”

  “That’s not what you said last week now, Paul, is it?” There was now menace in her voice.

  “It wasn’t like that, and you know it!” Paul spat back.

  Debbie sat out of the way in the lounge, holding the telephone receiver, while her other hand hovered over the dial. She wanted to make the call. She had to make the call. But she needed to hear what was going on too. She strained to listen.

  “You don’t want to see your own daughter?” Christina continued. “She’s in the car. She wants her father.”

  “She’s not mine, Chrissy, is she?”

  “Don’t!” she shouted. “Don’t make out it’s me who’s been sleeping around!”

  Paul nearly did something he’d never done before, and that was hit a woman. He instantly felt guilty, but this was all too much.

  “That is the reason we broke up, and you know it!”

  “That’s not true! I didn’t sleep with him. Okay, in a drunken state we did things I’m not proud of, but you are the only person I’ve slept with in many, many years.” She took a breath, turned away, and wiped a tear from her eyes and then calmly said, “So, if you are the only person I’ve had sex with in years, then she is yours.”

  Paul sat down on the wooden porch chair before his legs went. “I don’t see how. How old is she?”

  “You want me to draw a diagram? You know how it works, we have done it enough times.” Her words came out in waves, building up before a pause and finally being delivered softly and calculating. “She’s eighteen months. You’d been seeing your fancy bit a few months I’d say, when she was conceived.” A sly grin escaped as she threw a glance into the lodge, although still unable to see Debbie.

  Debbie still held tightly to the receiver, twin moist lines of tears rolled again down her cheeks, and a hole in both her heart and the pit of her stomach had appeared. She felt physically sick. Could Paul have done it? Could he have kept that secret for all this time?