Joe Coffin Season One

by Ken Preston

  Coffin slowly turned his head and looked at Emma. At first he didn’t seem to be looking at her, but then his gaze slowly focused, and he came back from wherever his mind had retreated to. Without even looking down, he dropped the gun.

  Emma could see Craggs behind Coffin, still straining at his bonds, grunting, his eyes wide with fear.

  “What now, Joe?” Emma said, her voice little more than a whisper. “Am I next? Are you going to kill me now?”

  Coffin said nothing, just stared at her. He seemed to be in shock, his face scrunched up as though he was in agony, and staring at Emma as though she was a ghost.

  And then Emma realised he wasn’t staring at her, but at something behind her.

  Emma spun around.

  Steffanie had climbed to her feet. She was pushing her long, curly hair off her ruined face, completely unashamed of her nakedness. The right side of her face had been ripped apart. Her eye was an empty, red socket, and her cheek and ear were little more than ragged strips of flesh. Emma could see the shattered teeth through the holes in her cheek.

  But the left side of her face was relatively undamaged.

  She peeled her lips back in a ghastly imitation of a smile.

  “Hi Joe,” she said.

  i can't go in there

  Frank Carter had driven all the way back to his sister’s house and not seen Julie anywhere. He knew about the shortcut through the woods in the park, but seriously doubted she would have gone that way. Not in the dark. She was a sensible girl, if a little too independent minded at the moment. It was her age, though. Hadn’t he been the same when he was a teenager?

  Frank sat in the car, the engine idling, the windscreen wipers keeping up a steady, metronomic beat as they swiped across the glass. After watching Julie disappear in the gloom of the heavy rain, he had decided on impulse to give her a lift home, after all. No matter how much she protested. Just thinking about that man in the hardware shop the other day had got him all unsettled.

  Frank had grabbed his coat and run outside, cursing himself for being an idiot, fumbling with the car keys as the rain pounded him on the head and back. He kept telling himself to stay calm, that he would catch up with her in no time in the car.

  But that wasn’t how it had worked out. Here he was, parked outside her house, and he hadn’t seen her on the way. He should have passed her. There was no way she could have walked, or even run, so quickly that he couldn’t have caught up with her.

  Frank peered at the front door through the rain streaked windscreen and debated going inside or not. He decided not to for the moment. If Julie was inside, she was safe and dry and getting ready for her night out with her friends. But if she wasn’t...well, he didn’t want to worry her mother just yet. Maybe if he did one more drive up and down in the car. Perhaps she had slipped and fallen, or somebody had stopped to give her a lift.

  But no. If she’d fallen, surely he would have seen her. And if somebody had stopped and offered her a lift in his car, she would be home by now. Unless, of course, he didn’t take her home.

  Frank pushed that thought away. It was too ugly to examine closely.

  Shoving the car into first gear and releasing the handbrake, Frank swept around in a wide U-turn on the deserted street. As he slowly retraced his journey, turning his head from side to side as he kept a lookout for his niece, he absently massaged his chest with his left hand. The anxiety he felt was turning into a dull ache.

  His was the only car out tonight. Even driving slowly, sheets of water cascaded from under his wheels. Why had he let Julie have her own way tonight? He should have insisted on driving her home.

  Frank slowed the car to a stop by the park. The dull shadow of the wood was just visible through the heavy rain, and the mist on the inside of the car window. Frank wiped a patch clear on the glass, and peered intently through the space, not really sure what he was looking for.

  Was that something on the grass he could see? A dark bundle of rags, possibly a body?

  Frank pushed at the door, wincing at a sudden, sharp pain in his chest. He slammed the door shut, pulling the hood up over his head as the rainwater streamed down his face. Blinking away the raindrops, Frank walked through the puddles, approaching the dark shape on the ground in trepidation.

  As he got closer, the shape resolved itself into a gnarled old tree stump. Frank didn’t know whether to be relieved or not. Wiping water off his face, he took a deep breath. All of a sudden his lungs couldn’t seem to hold enough air in them. Probably the anxiety he was feeling.

  Frank stood helplessly in the rain, staring at the tree stump, as though willing it to speak, and tell him what to do next. Because, other than going to his sister’s house and calling the police, he had no idea what he should do. Deciding that was now his best course of action, Frank lifted his head, tearing his gaze away from the tree stump, and something else nearby caught his eye. He walked over to it and reached down and picked it up.

  A shoe.

  Julie’s shoe.

  “Oh, dear Lord, no,” he whispered.

  Then he noticed the flattened strip of grass leading into the woods. Like somebody had been pulled in there, their feet dragging along the ground, flattening the wet grass. Frank stared at the dark shadows between the trees, the normally pleasant woodland suddenly appearing threatening and hostile. The anxiety swelled inside his chest, like a balloon, pushing painfully at his chest wall.

  I can’t go in there, he thought, and despised himself for his cowardice.

  No, it was best to let the police deal with this now. He needed to alert them right away. Frank shoved his hand inside his coat, searching for his mobile. It wasn’t there.

  Frank squeezed his eyes shut. Where was it? Had he dropped it, or left it at the store?

  No! Suddenly he remembered, it was in the car, charging.

  Frank began stumbling back to the car, still clutching onto Julie’s discarded shoe. Suddenly the swelling pain inside his chest erupted, tearing at his insides like a bomb had gone off in there. Clutching at his chest, Frank fell to his knees, gasping for air.

  Then he collapsed face down on the wet grass and lay still.

  edwards number 9

  For Joe Coffin it seemed as though his world was tilting, turning on its axis. Only months ago he’d had to deal with losing his wife and son in a bloody massacre. And tonight he’d found out that Tom Mills had been behind that murder. Everything was already fucked up beyond what he had ever thought possible, but now...now...

  It occurred to me, maybe those sheets over their heads were for protection.

  Coffin staggered slightly, took a step back. The floor seemed to be moving beneath his feet, as though he was on the deck of a ship, in a gentle, rolling swell.

  Protection? From what?

  He could hardly bear the sight of the monstrosity in front of him, that looked like Steffanie, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from her.

  From sunshine, daylight.

  This...this thing, it couldn’t be Steffanie, it wasn’t possible.

  You mean like, they were...

  Steffanie was dead.

  ...vampires.

  Coffin reached out, grabbed the back of a chair to steady himself. A grey curtain had descended over his vision, and his ears were filled with the sound of his own blood pulsing through his veins. He clung onto the back of the chair, afraid that he might faint, but focusing all his attention on staying conscious.

  Joe!

  Coffin took another couple of steps back, dragging the chair with him. His heels bumped into the edge of the stage, and he sat down. And all the time, his eyes were locked on the naked creature, dripping in blood, standing before him. A faintly mocking smile on her ruined face.

  But not so ruined that he couldn’t see those elongated, sharp teeth.

  JOE!

  And her eyes. Her pupils were so wide they looked like black holes in her eye sockets.

  “Joe!”

  A hand on his shoulder, shaking him
.

  “Joe, come on, snap out of it, let’s get out of here.”

  Coffin tore his gaze away from Steffanie and looked up, the sound of his pulsing blood fading away, his vision clearing as the grey disappeared like mist in a sudden breeze. Emma was standing over him, shaking him.

  “No,” Coffin said, shaking his head. The word sounded slurred to him, came out as Nnnu. He worked some saliva into his dry mouth, tried again.

  “No. I’m not leaving.”

  “Go on, Joe,” Steffanie said, walking towards them, her naked hips swaying like a cat’s. “You should go now, like the little girl says.”

  Coffin stiffened, his muscles painfully tense.

  “Who the fuck are you?” he growled.

  Steffanie stopped walking, rested her hands on her hips. “You know who I am, Joe.”

  Her voice was thick with blood, the words mangled as she struggled to form them with her ruined lips and tongue. But he could understand her all right.

  “No, it’s not possible, you’re lying.”

  Emma bent down beside him. “Joe, she’s right, we need to get out of here—”

  “Shut up!” Coffin hissed and pushed her away.

  Emma yelped as she fell over, onto the stage. She got up onto her hands and knees, crawled over to Craggs, still tied to the chair, the gag over his mouth.

  Coffin stood up. He felt steadier now, stronger. This thing standing in front of him, it wasn’t Steffanie, it couldn’t possibly be. Steffanie was dead, lying in a coffin in the graveyard, next to his son. This naked creature, covered in blood and flecks of brain, it was some kind of abomination, some sort of...of...

  “Joe, help me.”

  Coffin spun round. That voice had been Craggs. Emma had pulled the gag off his mouth and was working on untying the rope securing him to the chair. Craggs looked old and frail. His battered face was speckled with blood and grey matter, and his shirt was stained a deep red. He cried out as Emma released him, and grabbed his right arm just above the elbow, supporting it, protecting it from further movement.

  “Go on, Joe, run away,” Steffanie said. “We’ll be seeing each other again, I’m sure.”

  Coffin turned back towards the Steffanie monster. His lips peeled back in a snarl. This wasn’t Steffanie. This was all some kind of sick joke, Tom’s last laugh on Coffin. He was going to rip her apart, tear her limb from limb. Whoever, whatever, she was, she couldn’t desecrate his wife’s memory like this.

  “Joe, please, we need to get out of here now,” Emma said.

  Coffin turned around again. Emma was standing, supporting Craggs under one arm. Her eyes were round and pleading.

  “You know what these things are like, you can’t kill them. The other one will be waking up again any minute now, and then you’ll have to fight two of them. Please, Joe, help me get Craggs out of here. We need to get him to a hospital.”

  Coffin looked back at Steffanie. That mocking smile, those elongated teeth, and those dark eyes.

  It wasn’t possible.

  Steffanie was dead.

  * * *

  They didn’t take Craggs to a hospital after all. They put him in the back of Emma’s hire car, Mortimer Craggs complaining all the while that he was fully able to handle himself, and didn’t need a nursemaid. Especially not when that nursemaid was a reporter. Emma told him to be quiet, or else she was going to take a photograph of him, all beaten up and bloody as he was, and plaster it on the front page of the Herald.

  Craggs stopped complaining.

  Emma wanted to take him straight to casualty. She didn’t like the look of his arm, it was swelling up, and bruising badly, and he could hardly walk or put any weight on his ankle. Craggs said he wasn’t going to any hospital, and when Emma turned to Coffin for support, he shook his head, and said that Craggs was right, there would be too many questions to answer if they turned up at casualty.

  “Take me to Eddie’s,” Craggs said, from the back of the car.

  Emma, sitting in the driver’s seat, looked at Coffin through the open window. He was standing in the rain, in his leather jacket, holding his helmet tucked under one arm. He kept looking back at the club, as though he still couldn’t quite believe what he’d seen.

  “Edwards Number 9,” Coffin said. “It’s a rock club, down on—”

  “Yeah, I know what Edwards Number 9 is,” Emma replied, and looked at Craggs in the rear-view mirror. “Are there any clubs you don’t own around here?”

  “I own everything in this town,” Craggs said.

  “Great,” Emma muttered.

  “Follow me,” Coffin said.

  He pulled the motorbike helmet over his head and climbed on the Harley. Emma followed him in the car as he rode out of the car park and onto the road. The rain was still coming down as hard as ever, and Emma had to put the wipers onto fast, just to clear the windscreen enough that she could see Coffin’s tail light ahead in the gloom.

  The streets were almost completely deserted, the traffic lights changing from red to green at silent junctions. In contrast, the pub and shop windows, and the pizzerias and the restaurants, were all blazing with light and life.

  Emma concentrated on following Coffin, but in her mind’s eye, all she could see was Steffanie, naked and dripping with blood, half her face ripped apart. She hadn’t been able to believe it, even though part of her mind had begun to accept the truth of what Jacob had said, until she saw Steffanie in the club, lying on the floor. At first glance Emma had thought she must be dead. But then she thought of Abel, and how he had refused to die, despite Coffin’s best efforts to kill him.

  Steffanie and the old man, they were the ones Tom had smuggled out of the house, under protection of the blanket. They were the ones in the car, when Emma and Coffin chased them down the motorway. Coffin had come so close to discovering Steffanie then.

  “What’s your name?” Craggs said, breaking into her thoughts.

  Emma glanced in the rear-view mirror. The old man was slouched in the back seat, his lined face a sickly yellow under the glow of the passing street lights. Hard to believe he was one of the most vicious and notorious gang leaders Britain had ever known.

  “Emma,” she replied.

  Craggs nodded, wearily. “I remember now. Emma Wylde, hotshot reporter. The one Joe shared a car with when he was after Tom yesterday.”

  Emma’s eyes flicked off the road, glanced at Craggs again in the mirror. He wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were hooded, like he might fall asleep any moment.

  “Has Joe tried to get in your pants, yet?” he said.

  “The fuck?” Emma said. “No, he hasn’t!”

  “Oh, he will.” Craggs chuckled, and then the laugh turned into a coughing fit.

  Emma ignored him, and the coughing subsided. Craggs was silent for a minute, and Emma thought he might have drifted off to sleep, when he spoke again,

  “You’re not going to write about any of this in your paper,” he said.

  “That’s my decision,” Emma replied.

  “No, it’s not your decision at all.” Craggs pulled himself up a little straighter, wincing at the pain. “Besides, who’s going to believe any of it?”

  “Are you serious? It’s a bloodbath back at your club. As soon as the cops set foot inside Angels, they’ll have a lot less trouble believing what I tell them.”

  “You’re not involving the police in my business, Emma,” Craggs said, quietly.

  “The fuck I’m not,” Emma snapped.

  Careful, she thought. He looks vulnerable now, but you’ve got to remember who you’re talking to. This is the man who removed Tony Henley’s fingers and toes one by one with a pair of pliers, even after he’d started talking.

  Craggs doubled up with a coughing fit again, his face screwed up in pain.

  “What’s wrong?” Emma said. “Is something hurting inside?”

  “I fell down the stairs,” the gang boss said. “What do you think is wrong?”

  “We should take you to a hos
pital. What are they going to do for you at Edwards? Play you some shitty Goth rock music and hope that will make you better?”

  “I’ve got my own doctor to take care of me,” Craggs said, his voice hoarse from the coughing.

  “Not that incompetent bastard who sewed Joe up, I hope,” Emma replied. “If that’s the case, why don’t we stop wasting time, and I just drive you straight to the funeral home?”

  Craggs laughed quietly. “You’ve got spirit, I’ll give you that. I can see why Joe likes you.”

  Joe likes me? Emma let that one go. The last time she’d been involved in a conversation about who liked who, she’d been a teenager at college. In her present circumstances, this didn’t seem like the same thing.

  “You know what? There’s nothing stopping me from turning off now and driving you straight to City Hospital.”

  “Do you really think so?” Craggs said.

  Emma watched the orange glow of the light on Joe’s bike ahead of her. Craggs was right, of course. As soon as Emma turned the car around, Joe would be after her. Stop trying to be a fucking hero. Drop Craggs off at the club and then get the fuck out of there. Then you can call Nick, get the entire fucking West Midlands police down to Angels, and you can blow your story wide open. You’ve got enough now, especially with the evidence on the USB stick.

  Emma’s grip tightened on the wheel as she thought of the video footage of Coffin shooting Terry Wu. The USB stick was locked safely away in her drawer at the Herald’s offices, but she had her iPad with her. Her eyes flicked over to her bag, lying on the passenger seat. If Joe or Craggs decided to search her stuff, and saw the video she had uploaded onto the tablet, she would be in big trouble.

  “What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?” Craggs said.

  “We’re here,” Emma said, as she pulled up outside Edwards Number 9.

  Coffin got off the bike and came around to Emma’s side of the car. The rain had eased off a little, but it was still coming down fairly heavy. Coffin opened her door and bent down to her level.