Chillingworth Mews: A supernatural horror novel

by Anton Palmer

  Chillingworth released the cables from around the dead woman’s neck, the lifeless body slipping to the floor. As Roger looked into her face, the image of pain and confusion etched into her death mask suddenly reminded him of-

  LISA…

  29

  The forest was dark and cold. A thick canopy of conifers blocked out the sunlight, the ground beneath her feet a carpet of dry brown needles shed by the trees over many years.

  She could hear retching, the odour of fresh vomit worming its way into her nostrils. As she leapt over a barren stream, almost catching her foot in a gnarled root that was clawing its way out of the dirt, she saw the beds.

  Dozens of them of were spread out amongst the trees, each containing a vomiting patient. As she came into view they caught sight of her, cries of “Nurse!” and “Over here!” echoing around her, each begging for her attention. Turning left and right, her mind in turmoil, not knowing which patient to attend to first, she looked around for assistance.

  No other nursing staff were to be seen. She was on her own.

  “Nurse, please…”

  “Just a moment.”

  “Nurse!”

  “Nurse!”

  “Nurse!”

  They were all shouting at her now, their calls getting louder, the beds seeming to close in on her…

  She ran, ignoring the cries and the waving of sick bowls. Ran until she left the forest behind her, the chill darkness giving way to the buildings of a town.

  ‘Lydmet welcomes you’.

  She’d heard of it, but couldn’t quite remember why…maybe a colleague lived here or came from here?

  She ran past the welcome sign towards a building – an apartment complex – a big sales board displaying its name: Chillingworth Mews.

  Something about the place stopped her dead, a shiver running down her spine as if the chill from the forest had caught up with her. A sudden vibration against her thigh startled her, a second or two passing before she realised her phone was ringing. She pulled it from her pocket and pressed the ‘Answer’ button.

  The voice on the other end of the line was dry and crackly – as if made of stone.

  LISA! ROGER NEEDS YOU…

  *

  The police-car pulled into the car-park in front of Chillingworth Mews.

  PC Simon Jones looked across at a blue Golf parked up to the left of the building’s entrance doors and checked the license plate.

  “Well, that’s definitley the good doctor’s car.”

  “So she made it to her call out then-“ WPC Tracy Walker checked her notes, “A Mrs Margaret Brown called her out for a headache.”

  The health centre had raised the alert after the out of hours service contacted them first thing that morning, concerned that they hadn’t heard anything from Dr Bond since the call out to Chillingworth Mews late the previous evening.

  PC Jones shut off the engine and both officers strolled over to the Golf, peering through the windows to see if Dr Bond was in her vehicle, perhaps asleep. There was no sign of her or her medical bag.

  WPC Walker tried the car’s doors. They were locked.

  “Let’s see if anyone’s at home,” she suggested, leading her colleague towards the collection of buzzers beside the building’s entrance doors. One of the buttons had the label ‘Mrs M Brown’ attached to it and the WPC pressed it firmly for several seconds, repeating the action when she got no response.

  “Try another.” PC Jones suggested.

  “Which one? None of the others have any names on.”

  “Any of them…all of them.”

  The officers both jabbed fingers at the panel of buzzers, pressing each of them several times.

  Still no-one answerd.

  Jones pushed and pulled at the door. It was definitley locked.

  “Let’s try the sales office. They’re bound to have a key…”

  WPC Walker turned to her colleague and shrugged as she found the sales office door was also locked up tight. Looking through the window, she could see a lit computer screen, paperwork strewn across the desk and a woman’s handbag on the floor beside a chair.

  “It looks like the sales woman at least turned up for work but she’s not here now.”

  “What about the developer?” Jones suggested, “Neil Bullock – lives in that big house on the other side of town.”

  “Fucking prick!”

  Jones looked taken aback.

  “Sorry, Simon – not you.” Walker smiled at her colleague, “Bullock! He’s a fucking wanker.”

  WPC Walker hed met Bullock a year earlier at a social gathering. The man was a lecherous bastard who thought all women were fair game just because he lived in a big house, drove a flash car and had a wallet with a bigger bulge than his underpants.

  Tracy had been standing at the bar trying to grab the barman’s attention when she’d felt a hand squeezing her backside.

  “What you having, sweetheart?”

  Turning to the voice, the first thing she saw was the wad of notes that Bullock was waving toward the bar tender, instantly catching his eye. The barman quickly poured Bullock a whisky before asking Tracy what drink she would like. As he sipped at his drink Bullock continued waving his wad in front her face – clearly hoping that as the liquor wetted his whistle so the crinkling of twenty-pound notes would wet her knickers.

  PC Jones pulled up next to the white van with Bullock Property Developments printed on its side. The two officers strode up to the front door, both ringing the bell and knocking on wood to signify their urgency.

  The pattern of their morning continued as it became clear that no-one was home.

  “Fuck’s sake!” Jones muttered under his breath. “So, what do you reckon? One more try at the sales office? Maybe the woman had just nipped out for something – she might be back by now.”

  “Might as well go and see. Come on.”

  *

  The traffic had been good to her and Lisa arrived in Lydmet less than an hour after waking from her chilling dream. In spite of the fact that she had never, as far as she could recall, been to the town before, she easily found the new apartment block, parking her old Fiesta outside the main doors.

  As she stood outside the entrance, deciding how to get in, she heard a muffled ‘thunk’ as the door unlocked itself for her.

  *

  “Shit!” WPC Walker pointed to the woman entering Chillingworth Mews, “Beep the fucking horn! Quick!”

  PC Jones slammed his palm against the steering wheel, blasting the police-car’s horn as he sped into the building’s car-park. The blaring noise fell on deaf ears, the woman walking on through the entrance, the door closing behind her.

  “Bollocks!” Jones banged his forehead against the steering-wheel in frustration.

  “Never mind,” chuckled his female colleague, “come on – let’s see if the sales woman’s back yet.”

  30

  Roger was helpless, pinned to the wall by electric cables as he waited for Lisa’s arrival. Somehow, the force within Chillingworth Mews had combined its own powers with his, sending out a message to Lisa, stretching across the miles to fnd her. And Roger had sensed that the message had been received.

  As he heard tentative footsteps on the staircase, the echoing footfalls carrying through the open apartment door, he felt the noose of flex tighten around his throat, cutting off his ability to shout out any kind of warning. At the inevitable sound of Lisa’s fingers on the handle of the bedroom door, Roger felt those childhood butterflies jittering in his belly once more. But, unlike the games of hide and seek with his father, where the nerve induced insects had flitted about, fuelled by excitement and benign fear, the bugs that festered in him now were bloated and misshapen creatures; born of dread.

  “Roger?”

  His heart leaped at the sound of her voice, the memories of his love for her overwhelming him as if suddenly released from some dammed up cerebral reservoir. He desperately tried to call out to her; to tell her to run, but the wo
rds were choked off before they even reached his throttled larynx.

  He wept, knowing he was powerless to help her, and, as he heard her fingers fumbling at the door handle, the mutated butterflies in his gut proved too overpowering, the contents of his bladder splashing to the floor at his feet.

  “Are you here?”

  Lisa stepped into the room, pausing with a strangled gasp as she spotted the bodies of Sam and the sales woman on the floor.

  LISA…

  The voice seemed to shake the room, bouncing off the walls as it echoed inside her skull.

  “Roger? Is that you?”

  HELP ME…

  She marched forward, ignoring the carnage and the stink of death, her mind focussed only on thoughts of Roger, desperate to help the man she loved. The bedroom door slammed shut behind her.

  Lisa reeled at the sound, screaming as she saw Roger held fast against the wall, coloured wires embedded in his face, thin streams of blood trickling down his cheeks where the copper strands had penetrated his flesh.

  Roger’s eyes bulged, his jaws mouthing silent syllables as he tried to speak to her, to force the words out - nothing but gargled spit flecking his lips. He watched Lisa’s face with dismay as her gaze dropped to his exposed crotch, the pool of piss on the floor soaking darkly into the crumpled jogging trousers that gathered at his feet.

  WELCOME, LISA!

  She twisted around, desperately searching for the source of the voice as the cables that had been hanging loosely around Sam’s lifeless corpse snaked across the floor towards her. The wires quickly wrapped themselves around her body like creeping vines, pulling her towards the wall, her feet kicking and flailing as she tried to fight them. Within seconds she was pinned against the plaster, a single cable peeling off to drag Sam’s body out of the way before it arced back towards Lisa, looping itself snugly around her throat.

  The cable around Roger’s neck pulled his head up sharply, forcing him to look directly at Lisa, held against the wall opposite. Her face was a wet mask of shock, confusion and panic.

  TRADE!

  The flex around his neck loosened its grip a fraction, allowing him to answer.

  “No trade…”

  Roger’s response was the same as before but this time delivered with far less assuredness, a noticeable weakness tainting the words. He felt Chillingworth’s anger and watched as the coloured wires burst forth from the cables around Lisa’s body, quickly unzipping her blue nurse's tunic and tearing it from her, the copper snakes making short work of shredding her underwear. Seeing fresh tears of both fear and humiliation fall from her eyes, he wept with her.

  Several cables wrapped themselves around Lisa’s breasts, groping at her exposed flesh before individual strands twisted themselves around her nipples, squeezing blood, bloating her teats as sharp copper points prepared to pierce them…

  TRADE!

  “No…no trade...” Roger’s words were wet with sorrow as he looked into Lisa’s watery eyes, “I’m sorry, Lisa – I love you but I can’t give it what it wants…”

  Lisa screamed as her nipples were perforated, tiny jets of blood squirting from her pierced nubs.

  TRADE!

  “No! No trade.” Wracked with sobs, his head dropped as he turned his gaze away from her – away from the look of hurt and confusion in her face, a look he had caused before - only this was a hundred times worse. She couldn’t comprehend what was happening to her. Didn’t understand she was a pawn in a game – a battle between him and the entity that dwelt within the building’s walls – that her suffering and humiliation were just stakes, antes to be raised until someone folded. But Roger knew from the words that lay as yet unborn on the flesh of her quivering lips that she understood enough to know that he had the power to stop her pain – and yet he did nothing.

  The sleeve of wires suddenly wrapped itself back around Roger’s flaccid penis, stroking him back to hardness, the probes in his brain teasing out memories of him and Lisa in bed, playing out scenes in his mind to accelerate his arousal.

  The flex around his neck snapped his head back up, forcing him to look at Lisa as the water pipe twisted between her legs, positioning itself at her opening, and, as his cock swelled beneath the sleeve’s masturbations, he heard the boiler in the kitchen roar to life, the pipe plunging into Lisa’s vagina.

  She screamed loudly as the jagged metalwork violated her…

  “Trade! I’ll trade…just let her go…”

  TRADE FIRST!

  Roger heard the boiler shutting off and saw the pipe slide out from between Lisa’s thighs, a watery dribble of blood accompanying its withdrawal. The cables holding her to wall stayed firmly in place.

  “Lisa…”

  He tried to look her in the eye but she turned her face away from him, the gravity of the sacrifice he was about to make obviously lost on her - along with her love for him too, he guessed.

  Perhaps that was for the best…

  “I love you, Lisa, I can’t explain…just remember - I love-“

  His last words to her were cut short as the copper strands in his brain wrapped themselves around nerves and neurons. He could feel the entity filling him, displacing his thoughts and memories, a taste of brick and plaster clogging his mouth. His vision was beginning to blur, growing darker, his sight now something more akin to pressure and temperature; the sensing of footfalls on a floorboard, raindrops on roof tiles, but whether through his dimming eyes or a sensed change in the room, he saw Sam’s body rise to its feet.

  The transfer of Chillingworth’s essence into flesh and Roger’s into brick paused as Roger felt the entity’s surprise, its shock; its curiosity. Clearly Sam’s re-animation was not of Chillingworth’s doing or any part of its plan.

  Sam’s corpse raised an arm and pointed at Roger, its mouth opening as a voice, dry as dust, rent the air:

  “He’s ours!”

  Roger recognised the voice instantly: the spokesman for the dead.

  “He belongs to us…”

  A stream of red dust burst from Sam’s lifeless throat, swarming like a billion tiny insects towards Roger. The gritty motes swirled around around him, eating at his bonds, scouring away plastic and metal. More cables exploded from the walls and ceiling, providing reinforcements, the dust released by their eruption sucked into the whirling maelstrom of red grains.

  The room shook as varnished wooden boards snapped up from the floor, standing to attention like soldiers, forming a protective barricade against the worst of the dust until they too were eroded into minute particles, sawdust spinning in little twisters, eager to join their brothers in arms.

  The wall at Roger’s back suddenly opened up, the cables that were still capable of doing so, pulling him into the void.

  HE’S MINE!

  “Noooo…”

  Roger was aware of the churning in his guts, the tugging at his bowels. Aware, but not of any pain. Too much of him had been taken away to feel anything from the nerve endings of his body - his soul still remained, for now, but the flesh and bones belonged to someone or something else.

  His belly swelled and bucked as if his whole abdomen was herniating, entrails pulsing and throbbing beneath over-stretched skin. The cables around him pulled harder, copper shafts digging deep into his flesh to protect their grip from the whirling storms of dust. The bulging in his abdomen continued as he became the rope in this tug-of-war, his taut skin beginning to split, blood pouring freely from the ever lengthening gash, a bloodied ribbon of intestines suddenly bursting out across the room under the force of the invisible hands that pulled at them.

  NOOO!

  Chillingworth gave a final desperate tug to save the body that was already ruined beyond salvation. The building’s walls shook and crumbled under the force of its resistance, windows cracking, glass panes falling from their frames out on to the street, the upper floors giving way, dropping white goods and furniture crashing into the empty apartments below.

  The two forces were now merely battl
ing for the sake of ego, their prize rendered worthless by their struggles. Like two feral cats hissing and clawing each other over a piece of mangled roadkill, Chillingworth and ‘the dead’ pulled at his flesh until the rope in their tug-of-war finally broke under the strain, Roger’s body tearing in two in a welter of blood and viscera.

  A loud scream echoed through the crumbling building, the force of the sound bringing down the weakened walls, the roof crashing through the tumbling shell in a choking mushroom of dust.

  Epilogue

  Catherine Phelps tooted the Range Rover’s horn as she pulled into the gravelled driveway. The front door of the house opened immediately, her husband, Dan, waving at the occupants of the car - his wife and their four year old daughter, Ashlee waving back enthusiastically.

  Neither Catherine nor Ashlee had seen the house before, other than in photographs. Dan, a builder by trade had bought it at auction – a surprise present for the couple’s sixth wedding anniversary. The property had been little more than a shell and he had purchased it for peanuts with the idea of spending a couple of years completely renovating the place.

  In order to maintain the element of surprise, he had been adamant that his wife was not to visit the house until it was finished, and, up until that morning, she hadn’t even known where it was located. Her entire sum of knowledge regarding the property consisted of the exterior and interior photographs that Dan had snapped before any work had been undertaken - her only contribution to the project, choosing kitchen and bathroom designs from the stack of glossy brochures her husband had brought her.

  Dan beamed as he watched his wife unbuckle their daughter from her car seat. He was sure they were going to love their new home. They should have been seeing it for the first time a couple of weeks ago, but he’d hit a last minute snag in Ashlee’s playroom. A number of the floor boards were rotten and it had taken several days to track down replacements of the same size and age that would blend in. Luckily, he had found some at a reclamation yard forty miles away that were a perfect match, although, one of the boards, with two dark knots like eyes, was creaking a bit in spite of Dan’s best efforts to fix it.