Chillingworth Mews: A supernatural horror novel

by Anton Palmer

  “Tommy! Get me out of here!”

  “Fucking hell, Malc - hold tight!” As Tommy made towards his stricken friend his attention was caught by a rippling in the wall.

  “What the fuck?”

  The flaking paint exploded into clouds of dust as the wall bubbled and flexed - as if something was moving within it. Tommy directed the weak beam of his torch at the wall as the rippling spread towards him, the light from the bulb barely more than a dull glow.

  The batteries died – the boys were in darkness.

  “Tommy! Help me…I can’t hold on much longer…”

  “Did you see what was happening to the wall, Malc? What the fuck is going on?”

  “Fuck the wall, you cunt! Get me out of here!”

  “I can’t fucking see you, Malc!” Tommy gave the torch a shake and was rewarded with a spark of luminescence - faint, but enough to pinpoint his mate hanging through the floor.

  “Hold on, Malc. I’m coming.”

  As he stepped towards his friend, Tommy was suddenly yanked back against the wall, the force knocking the wind out of him. He dropped his torch, the impact on the floor apparently releasing the remains of the battery’s charge as the bulb burst into life, shining straight at Tommy.

  Malcolm stared, mouth gaping, at the sight of his pal. Tommy was pinned to the wall by an electrical cable, the grey flex erupting from the plaster and wrapping itself around Tommy’s throat. Malcolm could do nothing but watch as more cables burst from the walls, snaking around Tommy’s arms and legs, lifting him off the ground, holding him tight in their grasp.

  “Malcolm…help…me…” Tommy’s voice was strangled, every word an effort, every syllable strained and hoarse.

  Malcolm tried to pull himself up but had neither the physical prowess nor the leverage to lift himself more than an inch.

  “I’m sorry, Tommy,” he sobbed, “I can’t do it.”

  All he could do was watch, his strength waning by the second, as more electrical cables sprung from the wall, their grey insulation peeling back to reveal the rainbow of the individual wires within. These wires then stripped back their own coloured insulation, the exposed copper strands twisting into sharp, tapered points as they danced in front of Tommy’s face, moving as if to the music of some unseen, silent snake-charmer. Malcolm gaped as he watched the ‘copperheads’ crawl up his friend’s face, some disappearing into his open mouth, others worming up his nostrils, the rest journeying further, spreading out across his eyeballs before diving their sharpened ends into the gelatinous orbs, tiny sprays of vitreous fluid sparkling in the torchlight.

  Malcolm’s arms began to tremble under the strain. He tried to shift his elbows slightly to ease his discomfort but only succeeded in dropping further into the hole in the floor, the muscles in his back now beginning to burn under the increased load. Despite his pain and the thought of his imminent plunge, he couldn’t bring himself to look away from Tommy, a macabre fascination glueing his gaze to his friend’s torch-lit fate.

  The veins in Tommy’s face and neck began to bulge as the copper wires tunnelled along them. Dozens of pin-prick holes opened up as each sharp metal thread pierced and nicked the blood vessels as they squirmed their way through, thin trickles of blood running down the boy’s skin. As he continued to watch, he saw Tommy suddenly gasp, his body, entwined with cables, stiffening against the wall for a second.

  “Tommy?” Malcolm screamed, certain he had just witnessed his friend’s death. “Tommy – what’s happening?”

  HUNGRY…

  Both boys reacted as they each heard the voice booming inside their heads. The torch began to flicker wildly, flashing on and off, sometimes bright, sometimes barely more than a tepid glow. Amongst the strobing, Malcolm screamed as Tommy bucked and thrashed, blood now pouring from the pinprick wounds. His face seemed to be imploding - his cheeks hollow, eyeballs bulging in their sockets. A crackling sound filled the corridor as all fluids were drained from Tommy’s body, and his skin, now desiccated and barren, fell from his bones in leprous flakes.

  As the last of the torch’s light guttered, Malcolm stared in silent disbelief as the wall behind Tommy split wide open, wooden laths puncturing his lifeless body like teeth and swallowing his pal whole before the wound healed over as if nothing had happened.

  The torch flickered out.

  Malcolm was left hanging in the darkness, the last vestiges of his strength almost gone. He felt something touch his foot and screamed out the remnants of his sanity along with the contents of his bladder as unseen coils wrapped themselves around his legs and pulled him through the floor.

  PART TWO

  18 MONTHS LATER…

  9

  The Monday morning sun was blazing through a chink in the bedroom curtains. Roger gently stroked the smooth curves of the woman’s hip as she dozed on her side, her warm back towards him. He nestled closer to her, relishing her heat and softness, his ‘morning-glory’ probing between her thighs, his mouth nibbling gentle kisses at her neck. The scent of her dark-brown hair and the faded remnants of her perfume filled his nostrils as he felt her push back against him in return.

  Lisa stirred, rolling over to face him, a blissful sigh slipping from her lips.

  “Good morning, baby…”

  Oblivious to any concerns of morning breath, she smiled and kissed him, wrapping her fingers around his stiffness.

  “Mmm…I think someone’s pleased to see me.”

  Roger pulled her tight against him, pressing his lips to hers, his tongue keen to find its mate. Lisa quickly shook off her ‘just woken’ lethargy and climbed astride him, eager to feel him inside her again…

  *

  After the crash, Roger had spent two months in hospital recovering from his injuries: two broken ribs, a busted nose, fractured skull, shattered kneecap, a ruptured aorta and an amnesia that had shredded all memories of the accident.

  Lisa had been a nurse on his ward, attending to his needs several times a day until he was well enough to be sent home. From the start, there had been an obvious attraction between them which, as Roger’s condition improved, blossomed into a flirtatious repartee that, although never crossing the boundary of professional conduct, was still energised with a spark that made it clear to both parties that this was more than just mere banter. Once he was out of the hospital, the couple were free to pursue their relationship.

  Roger hadn’t been on a date since Rachel. The trauma of discovering that the girl whose shoulders had carried the weight of his future dreams was not the innocent virgin he had naively assumed, and the manner in which he found out – in all its deep-throat glory – had built a wall around him which no woman had since been able to scale.

  Until Lisa.

  Roger wasn’t sure whether his ease with her was because he felt he had come to know her so well after his weeks in the ward - or because of the one other casualty of the accident: his gift.

  Since he had first come round in the intensive care unit, he knew his ability had left him. He couldn’t really explain how he knew; it wasn’t as if he’d had any chance to try his powers while he was bed-ridden and connected to a dozen beeping monitors. He just seemed to sense… its absence. It was as if his gift was now something that someone else had and that he had only read about or seen on TV – a thing he was aware of, but not his thing. He struggled to define it any other way and, as the antiseptic-scented weeks passed by, memories of his ability slipped further into the murky recesses of his mind until he barely thought about it at all. Eventually, even the gag-inducing recollections of that night with Rachel had dwindled to little more than the clipped remnants of a long ago nightmare.

  The couple’s first date was a Thai meal, a few drinks and back to Lisa’s flat. There was no ‘three dates till we mate’ rule with her - she was hot and horny and, keen though he was, when she made her dishonourable intentions clear, Roger felt the icy tentacles of anxiety creeping into his gut.

  Lisa was an attractive thirty-year-old who�
��d almost certainly had recent lovers and, under the influence of alcohol had hinted at something of a ‘wild’ past. Roger, however, was still a virgin and sex for the first time was as thrillingly terrifying for a thirty-five-year-old as it was a shy and awkward teenager. He figured the best thing to do was to let her do all the work in the hope that his inexperience would not be as obvious.

  “So…are you coming back to mine?” Lisa had asked, draining her wine glass as she awaited his response.

  “Only if you put your uniform on and play the naughty nurse,” Roger had whispered to her, leaning across the table so that the other diners couldn’t overhear.

  Lisa relished her role of the naughty nurse seducing her patient. All Roger had to do was lie on the bed and get hard.

  As it had turned out, despite his anxieties, he had no problem with either task.

  *

  Roger lay back, eyes closed against the morning sun, listening to the rhythmic squeak of the bed springs as Lisa rode him. She dictated the pace – fairly sedate to begin with but as the creak of the mattress became more frequent, accompanied by Lisa’s increasingly louder moans, Roger knew she was getting closer to her climax.

  He reached forward to stroke her breasts, gently squeezing her erect nipples before sliding his hands upwards, skimming along the sides of her slender neck. He felt the chain of her gold Saint Christopher under his fingers (a present from her parents when she was eighteen – to keep her safe on her travels to university) the delicate links warm from her exertions, and slid his digits down to the flat disc that hung from it, sliding his fingertips over the raised relief of the holy figure…

  The wall of the small bedroom was covered in posters of male stars from the worlds of pop music and movies. Pushed tight against it was a bed and, spread like warm butter on the black quilt, her smooth pale flesh contrasting sharply with the dark duvet, lay Lisa; naked, her bottom at the edge of the mattress, her knees pushed up to her ears.

  She moaned loudly, her fingers digging into the bed-cover as the bearded young man kneeling on the floor between her splayed legs pounded into her.

  Behind him stood three other men. They too were naked, sporting rock-solid erections, each patiently waiting their turn with the eager young nursing student.

  The bearded man reached his point of no return with a deep groan, quickly pulling out of Lisa’s vagina and squirting the thick gouts of his pleasure onto her chest. She rubbed the warm fluid over her erect nipples, luxuriating in the sensation before gradually raising her hand to her mouth, a wicked look in her eyes as her tongue played over her shiny red lips. She slowly inserted each finger, in turn, sucking her cum-coated digits clean.

  “Next!”

  The bearded man climbed up onto the bed, straddling Lisa’s chest as he offered her his slowly shrivelling member to finish off. She took it into her mouth, sucking and working her tongue to devour every last drop of semen before spitting him out with a scream of ecstasy as the second man, much better endowed than his hirsute friend, thrust deep into her soaking wet slit…

  Roger pushed Lisa off him, a palm striking her in the face as did so, and ran to the bathroom.

  He dry-retched loudly into the white toilet bowl, his mouth flooded with the taste of semen, his brain swamped as the memories of Rachel came rushing back.

  He’d clearly just seen Lisa in her ‘wild’ days. Seen her, watched her and been her. He had tasted and felt everything that she had done. Had witnessed her sexual exploits both from a subjective point of view and as a hidden voyeur at the same time.

  He put a hand on his lower abdomen. He could still feel the second man’s cock inside Lisa – inside him. Worse; he could still feel the pleasure that both he and Lisa had shared as the man had plunged into her. He retched again, the sensations in his gut growing worse. The sickening warm glow of pleasure was giving way to a blunt stabbing - a rough tugging - as if some unseen hands were pulling at his bowels.

  He finally puked, emptying his stomach, viscous threads of vomit dangling from his lips as he gasped for breath, the pains in his gut continuing unabated, the invisible fingers now squeezing as they pulled. The discomfort seemed to feel much worse on his left side, as though his innards were being dragged in that direction.

  Rising slowly on shaky legs, Roger turned and leant over the basin, turning on the cold water tap. He breathed deeply as he splashed his face with the icy liquid, the shock of the water bringing a brief, but welcome distraction from the pain in his belly, which was now more centralised, the sensations jerking towards his lower back.

  “Babe?”

  There was a light rapping at the bathroom door.

  “Are you okay?”

  Roger’s breath caught fast in his throat.

  Shit, what could he say to her? She obviously thought he had pushed her away because he was feeling unwell. How could he explain that he had just witnessed her – felt her -engaged in a student gang-bang?

  “Baby? Do you want me to get you anything?”

  As he turned to face the white-painted door he had no time to formulate any response, the tugging in his guts suddenly doubling in strength, forcing him to step forwards to keep pace with his insides which felt as if they were already on their way out of the bathroom and heading across the landing.

  Crying out in pain, he flung open the door. Lisa stood in front of him, wrapped up tight in her pink fluffy dressing gown, an essay of concern written over her face.

  “Are you okay, baby?” She rushed towards him, hands ready to cradle him.

  With an outstretched arm, Roger barged past her, barely able to look her in the eye, and rushed into the bedroom to get dressed, the wrenching in his gut growing more urgent by the second, almost doubling him over as he pulled on his blue jeans. He grabbed a white t-shirt from the floor, where he’d discarded it the night before, and pulled it on before sitting on the edge of the rumpled bed to slip his feet into his trainers.

  As he exited the bedroom, Lisa was still on the landing, tears flowing down her cheeks, her face a wretched mask of confusion and fear. Her wet eyes shone wide, the expectancy of explanation plainly evident.

  She got none.

  “I’ve…got to go…”

  Four mumbled words, a look of disgust on his face that made her feel like shit on a shoe and he was down the stairs and out of the front door.

  10

  “This is the building’s communal entrance.”

  The female sales rep handed two sets of keys to the young couple standing beside her, their gold wedding bands glinting in the sunlight. The newlyweds were visibly excited. Having bought their apartment ‘off-plan’, this was the first time they had actually seen their new home.

  “You’ll need the keys with the yellow tab to unlock it, and please, always make sure the door closes behind you.”

  “Oh, I will, don’t you worry…” the young man gave a laugh, “otherwise every troubled teen in the town will be hanging around – my wife attracts them like flies.”

  The saleswoman laughed enthusiastically, trying to catch his eye as she did so, frowning as his attention was immediately grabbed by his wife’s playful slaps.

  “I’m a social worker,” she explained, “in my last job, a teenage boy had a bit of a crush on me and kept hanging around our flat.”

  “Ah. I see.” The sales-rep fixed her professional smile back into place and continued her duties. “To the left of the door is the intercom system, so that visitors can buzz you to let them in. As you can see, each button has an apartment number next to it plus a place for your name. Your Welcome Pack…” the rep waved a glossy folder at them, “contains a strip of white card for you to write your names on and slip in alongside.”

  The saleswoman flashed her best smile as the dark-haired young man took the folder from her manicured hand, her fingers briefly touching his for a split second. Both he and his wife quickly scanned the cover which showed a picture of Chillingworth Mews super-imposed over a fainter, much older photograph o
f Chillingworth House.

  “And on the right…” the sales agent directed the couple’s attention back to the entrance, “…are the mailboxes – again with the apartment numbers against each one and another space for you to slip in a name-card.”

  The woman paused for a second - mentally checking off the things she was supposed to tell them - her heavily made-up face furrowing slightly with the effort, the lines of middle-age she tried so hard to disguise cracking through the layers of foundation.

  Well… if one of you would like to do the honours…”

  The man stepped forward, placed his yellow-tagged key into the lock and gingerly twisted it. The latch released smoothly with an audible, satisfying click and he stepped through the glass door, holding it open for the ladies.

  “Oh wow, this looks great, babe…”

  The young woman scanned around the communal hallway, taking in the pristine walls, the faint odour of fresh paint still lingering in the air. Several black and white prints were strategically placed to break-up the magnolia monotony, one of which she recognised from the cover of the Welcome Pack.