The Family

by P. R. Black

  Becky pummelled his ribs while he cowered, a good dozen punches, then snapped his head hard to one side with a last, tremendous right cross which detonated where his ear should have been.

  He rolled off the tree, completely limp, and fell out of sight.

  Becky leapt back over the fallen trunk and ran, but another ghoul was already blocking her path. This one had the face of a startled rabbit, with rotten yellow teeth as incisors and marbled cat fur for a face, criss-crossed with chicken wire.

  ‘Stay, Piggee. Stay there,’ said this one. London accent, this time.

  Becky didn’t bother to fight; she swerved, returned to the overgrown path, then ran roughly in the direction Bernard had taken. From the map, she knew a clearing should appear; from there, she had a path to the road. That could lead to where she’d left the hire car, driven off a pine-needle strewn path and hidden from sight.

  Provided they hadn’t found that, it gave her a chance, just the slimmest chance—

  Half a dozen other figures broke cover, all around her, all clad in black trousers and long-sleeved tops, and all wearing masks of some kind. One man wore a black rubber mask fashioned like a pig’s or a boar’s, with steel tusks and a motorbike chain through the nose. The chain was held by a woman in a featureless porcelain mask, framed with blonde hair. The chain rattled as the man in the pig mask dragged on it, and the woman struggled to hold him in check.

  Becky ran blindly, branches tearing at her. One whipped her cheek, keen as a slap, but the sting barely registered. She had to make that clearing; there were signs Bernard had come through before her.

  A shrieking silver skull mask surged into view, sprung from a clump of ferns, teeth angled into rising arrowheads on a chromium plated surface. As he reached for her, Becky used her momentum to launch a flying kick which crashed into the man’s chest with a terrific impact that jolted her all the way up to her hip. The chromium head whipped forward, and the shoulders folded in on themselves as if on a hinge.

  Becky leapt over his flailing legs as he landed on his back, and carried on. Someone else took her by the shoulder and tried to lock an arm round her throat. She didn’t see the face, or even hear a voice; all she knew was muffled breathing and the press of hard, ridged plastic against her cheek.

  Then her shoulders rolled; she took the arm, planted her feet, and threw the figure behind her full on the deck with a serpentine convulsion of her shoulder blades. She heard a plastic mask splinter against rock; then she was running again.

  The clearing was near; she fancied she could see the road. She was past the last line of trees, skinning the heel of her hand as she forced herself through a tight gap in the bark. Perhaps Bernard had made it; he might even be waiting with her by the car. From there…

  The clearing was tight, an oval space perhaps thirty feet long, the grass short.

  In the middle of it, dressed in black, quite calm, hands at his sides, stance relaxed, stood the man she was looking for.

  The bone mask was intact. There were the large dark eyes, just as she remembered them.

  ‘Hello Becky,’ he said, in that familiar, rough-hewn voice. ‘Together at last. Come to me. Do what you’ve always wanted to.’ He made a gesture with his hands spread. It was not an aggressive motion; rather, he signalled as if she might run to him, as a child to her father.

  She closed on him, but not to embrace. The stun gun was out of her jacket in an instant; she fired while she still ran. The twin needles sparked at his black clad chest, and he staggered – but did not fall.

  He plucked the twin prongs from his chest and hurled them away.

  He rapped at his chest; he had a bulletproof vest on.

  Stupid. Her chance was gone.

  Momentarily shocked, she tossed the gun, then sprinted at him. Defence was the foundation stone of her training, but she had plenty of attack in her – had even envisaged exactly this moment.

  She tried the flying kick again, but he was ready for it; he slapped her foot away and then blocked the elbow smash she followed it with, the motion of his flexed arm mirroring hers.

  He kicked at her left foot just as she braced it to shift her weight, and almost sent her sprawling. A hand clamped round her upper left arm, hard enough for his nails to break the skin; then a tremendous punch from his free hand jackhammered just below her ribcage, blasting the breath out of her and pitching her onto her backside.

  Shrieks and howls of glee sounded from the trees behind her.

  In a split second, Becky catapulted back to her feet, her blood cooling rapidly. He stood back to allow her to get up, then she attacked him again, darting punches at every available point of his body with incredible speed. It became nightmarish; she could not land a clear blow. Time and again her fists found his elbows, his forearms too thick and bony to hurt.

  She surged close to drive a knee into his groin and at last he grappled with her, awkwardly. One hand ensnared her hair and forced her head back, and she screamed in pain and frustration. She gripped the mask. It was an old thing, and the bones felt seamed, as if they’d turned to stone over time.

  Her fingers crab-walked across the pitted face towards his eyes, but by that time he had kneed her in one kidney, and her body curled inward, involuntarily, as she gasped for breath.

  Then a whistling punch numbed her cheekbone and tugged comet tails across her field of vision. As the world sparkled and undulated like swift water and the other side of her head nestled in cool boggy earth, the faces in the trees started forward, a nightmare jewellery box of leather, metal, plastic, bone. Some were formed into faces, some fashioned into animals; others were merely twisted in their design, a free hand granted to a lunatic.

  Becky clutched a fistful of gungy earth, a divot disturbed by their stampeding combat; as she drew back to lob it between the deep wells of Arkanescu’s eyes, something sparked into life in his hands.

  Her body jolted clear of the earth, then landed hard. She wasn’t sure if she had screamed, or the whole forest had. Her hands and thighs twitched in an obscene jitterbug.

  Becky smelled burning, and twin pillars of smoke tapered into the air from the twin prongs that jutted from her breast. Her vision blurred, but she could make out the trail of wires leading from the darts to the stun gun in his hands. Her own stun gun. The one she’d left behind in Romania.

  ‘Fine toys you have,’ he rumbled, tossing the weapon away. ‘You know, I’d never thought to use these things until I met you? You give me ideas, Becky.’

  Something else glittered in his hands as he started forward.

  Before she could speak, he crouched beside her and triggered the pepper spray into her eyes. Then, at last, she screamed.

  Hands gripped her, from every direction, and held her fast.

  58

  The sun sank, drowning the rain in the horizon. A clear night emerged, with starlight and a startling full moon. The air was alive with shrieking birds and not a few bats.

  Torches were lit round the perimeter, illuminating the obscene faces.

  Becky, Rosie and Bernard were fully clothed and tied upright to three separate menhirs. Their arms and legs were firmly lashed and thick, new hemp looped round their bellies and under their armpits. Their circulation was cut off and reattached, tingling Becky’s limbs as she struggled against her bonds.

  The first rule of escapology; wriggle room. She had none.

  Her vision was still blurry, but had largely cleared from the stinging blast that had blinded her for more than two hours. A man with a goat’s head mask had come along eventually, the absurd features tilted at an odd angle as he scrutinised her. He actually sniffed at her face, the hairs at the nose stirring.

  ‘I think I have a hanky in my pocket, if you need it,’ she croaked. ‘You sound a bit bunged up.’

  ‘Not as bunged up as you’re going to be,’ the man with the goat’s head had said, in a musical Aberdonian burr.

  ‘Fuck yourself, Jimmy.’

  The goat’s head pondered her
in silence for a second, and then he slapped her hard across the face. The pain in her cheek sparked back into flame along with the pistol crack impact. She did not have enough saliva left to spit at him.

  ‘I’ll be last on you,’ the goat declared, its glassy yellow eyes catching the torchlight. ‘I asked specifically. When you’re completely broken, when you’ve been used in every way it’s possible to be used, when you’ve already begged for death, I’ll be last. Think about it.’

  When white robes replaced the black clothes they had all worn for the capture, Becky supposed it was showtime.

  Masked faces lined up round the stone circle, and then the January Orchestra’s concert began.

  It was a vocal performance, a hellish choir dominated by a bass drone enunciated by the muffling effect of the masks. It rose and fell in languid waves, the key changes setting Becky’s teeth on edge. It had a strange beauty to it, ranging from a soprano at her highest possible setting to the burr of a wartime bomber, but it wasn’t a tune Becky would have listened to long under ordinary circumstances.

  None of the three captives had spoken much since they were tied up. To be fair to Bernard, he had put up a fight, arms and legs thrashing like a spider trapped in a glass, but he was quickly subdued and lashed to the stone. Rosie had simply collapsed, sobbing and pleading, and was led almost gently to her berth.

  Arkanescu, who had never removed the bone mask, cupped Rosie’s chin and stroked her hair as they tied her up, talking too low for Becky to hear.

  While being dragged to the menhirs and being tied up, Becky hadn’t fought, having been unable to see who to fight. She conserved her energy and took stock of her injuries; nothing broken, though she’d been briefly worried he had smashed her cheekbone. Lumps and bruises were the worst she’d suffered. For now.

  As the chorus droned on, Bernard’s posture had devolved into alarming insectoid-like twitches, so far as his bonds would allow, his whole head jerking back and forth. His mouth undulated like a caterpillar flailing at the outer edge of a leaf.

  ‘Can’t they stop that fucking noise?’ Rosie moaned. Her face had grown paler as the evening wore on; it complemented the moonlight. Her eyeliner had dried into cracked black veining down her cheeks, and no one had come along to lick them clean. ‘How long are they going to keep singing? Stop it!’

  ‘Rosie, try and stay calm,’ Becky said.

  ‘Stay calm? They’re going to rip us apart! No one will find us.’

  ‘I’m thinking.’

  ‘Yeah, you’ve got a plan, haven’t you? Like you planned to bring us here and catch him. Catch him! What a joke. It was a trap. All along. That bitch Galbraith set you up. And you fell for it! Maybe if you’d told me about what you were planning before roping me into it, I might have realised that!’

  ‘I didn’t know who to trust,’ Becky said. ‘That included you and Bernard. I was leaking information all over the place. I had to keep some stuff quiet.’ Her head sagged. She felt dizzy, as well as exhausted. Despite the fatigue, her body rattled and quivered, her nervous system on autopilot. It was a futile gesture, like the tremors of an old dog a day or two away from his final trip to the vet’s. Doubt and guilt added to the horror, the certain knowledge that while she might always have been damned, the other two had surely followed this path thanks to her.

  She scanned the trees, slowly and deliberately, trying to ignore the keening monsters. There was nothing. No one else.

  ‘It’s your fault, you stupid bitch!’ Rosie roared, finding her voice at last. ‘You wanted to collar him yourself. You wanted revenge. Well, go on then – there he is! Make a fucking citizen’s arrest!’ She arched her head back against the unforgiving stone, and screamed, high and loud. ‘Help! Help us! Help! Somebody please help us! Please!’

  Bernard started whimpering, a high counterpoint to the constant, oscillating drone of the chorus.

  Clad in white, glaring at them from beneath the bone mask, Arkanescu appeared in the middle of the clearing. The mask was etched against the moonlight like a clutched, spectral fist.

  He raised his hands and gestured. The droning fell to a whisper. Then he came forward and stood before the three prisoners spread-eagled on the face of the stones.

  ‘Welcome to the rest of your lives,’ he said, and bowed, mockingly.

  Then the bone mask nodded to the left and right.

  The man with the goat’s head and the chromium skull-face with the arrowhead set of teeth lumbered forward. Becky took no consolation in the sight of the latter limping heavily.

  They stood either side of Rosie. She grew hysterical, bucking like an animal.

  ‘Don’t take me… take her, she’s the one that’s after you!’ she wailed, indicating Becky.

  Rosie’s bonds were cut, and she was dragged towards the long, flat stone. The blood plummeted out of Becky’s face, as if a plug had been pulled. While this was happening, Arkanescu gazed into her eyes, ignoring Rosie.

  ‘I have access to thousands of pounds, and my uncle is a trader in the City of London,’ Rosie gibbered. ‘He has access to potentially millions of pounds. Anything you want. Property. Fake passports. You can disappear.’

  They forced her face down onto the slab, pulling her arms out and holding her tight. Rosie’s chin rested awkwardly on the surface, but it was no great effort for the two men to restrain her. She had not yet begun to fight.

  The goat’s head figure stroked her hair. Becky saw a tremor in his gloved hands as the fingers combed through Rosie’s shiny black locks.

  Bernard emitted a light, whistling sound, then uttered a stream of nonsense syllables, barely pausing for breath. It took a second or two for Becky to realise he was praying.

  Arkanescu strode forward.

  ‘I’ll fuck every one of you,’ Rosie wheezed. ‘I’ll do anything you like, as many times as you like. I’ll do it for days on end.’ She indicated Becky, eyes bulged in desperation. ‘That bitch knows everything. She’s got data hidden away all over the place. She’s got about twenty phones, half a dozen computers. I can tell you the passwords. I know where everything is. And Bernard – he’s been tracing you online. He’s a hacker. I know more. A lot more. I can get you access to everything he knows. He knows people in Russia.’

  ‘Child,’ Arkanescu said, gently. ‘There’s no need for you to worry. That’s all taken care of.’

  ‘Please don’t hurt me.’ It was a little girl’s voice.

  ‘You won’t suffer. You’re the lucky one.’

  Arkanescu tenderly parted her hair at the back of her neck, uncovering a plaster-of-Paris strip of skin. Then he tilted her chin slightly with his left hand.

  She was frantic. ‘I’ll be yours for life. For life. I’ll never leave you. Anything you want, you can have. I’ll stay with you.’

  Rosie’s words died – she died – as he swiped downward with the machete he had concealed underneath his robe.

  Metal clashed with stone in a shrill impact. Becky flinched; the obscene audience sighed collectively, the singing abruptly halted.

  Rosie’s face registered shock, eyes wide, mouth dropped open, and an eruption of blood seemed to coalesce with her slick black hair as the blow all but severed her head. The wide-eyed shock remained rigid on her face as Arkanescu twisted and tugged with a brutal, practised motion like a vet birthing a lamb. He raised Rosie’s head high, a trophy, the black hair trailing, cascading and seemingly taking root on the sacrificial altar, slick and bright in the moonlight. Her blood only blushed into full colour as it soaked Arkanescu’s gown.

  The chants from the audience became frantic; some of the penitents shuddered, and one or two threw themselves to the grass, a black pastiche of evangelical fervour.

  Arkanescu threw the head high and far, the hair streaming out as it turned end over end; and as it came down among the throng they fought for it in a terrible facsimile of a scrum for a bridal bouquet.

  The goat’s head and the chromium skull face tore at the clothes on Rosie’s body with
indecent haste. Other figures loped forward. One tore off a chequerboard-patterned mask and lapped at the blood drenching the stone where Rosie’s body had lain seconds before.

  Bernard retched, noisily, and began to sob.

  Arkanescu wiped the blade on a clear spot on his sodden robe; he nodded again, and a large group surrounded Bernard.

  They cut him loose. He did not fight; she heard his clothes tear. Someone started howling, high and loud, the cry of no living creature Becky had ever heard.

  ‘Leave him alive,’ Arkanescu said, with calm authority. ‘Hear me. Spare him his life – but only his life.’

  Bernard was borne across to another flat stone, already naked. A phalanx of dark figures closed round him like a fist. That was when he screamed, reaching an uncanny pitch until a hand clamped over his mouth.

  Arkanescu approached, the machete hanging low in his right hand. Ignoring the Rorschach patterning of Rosie’s blood – surely still warm – this was exactly how Becky had first seen him. He was flanked by the man with the chained pig’s head, and his female keeper.

  ‘You look nervous, Becky,’ the woman said, in a high, excited voice. ‘There’s no need to be nervous.’ She began to giggle.

  Somehow, Becky found a response. ‘Nice to see you again, Mrs Galbraith. I do like your outfit. This man is the chap who helped you with your boxes, is he?’

  The man in the pig mask grunted, and actually pawed the ground with his foot. Mrs Galbraith tightened her grip on the chain looped through the chromium tusks.

  ‘It is nice to see you, too. Not too uncomfortable, I hope?’ Galbraith asked.

  They cut Becky free, and she sagged to the ground, crying out in pain as her joints, her very blood, complained.

  The masked figures did not manhandle her.

  Arkanescu was composed. He gestured towards her with the knife. ‘We can end it now, if you wish. This is my one and only offer.’

  ‘Fuck yourself.’

  ‘That’s good. I’ll take that as a rejection. Not because you think you can still win. Because you’re a coward. You want to run. Like you ran before. You think you still can?’