Petrified

by Graham Masterton

  Recent Titles by Graham Masterton available from Severn House

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  UNSPEAKABLE

  PETRIFIED

  Graham Masterton

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First world edition published 2011

  in Great Britain and in the USA by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  Copyright © 2011 by Graham Masterton.

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Masterton, Graham.

  Petrified.

  1. Parental kidnapping–Fiction. 2. Traffic accident

  victims–Fiction. 3. Burns and scalds in children–

  Fiction. 4. Stem cells–Research–Fiction. 5. Crush

  syndrome–Fiction. 6. Gargoyles–Fiction. 7. Horror

  tales.

  I. Title

  823.9′2-dc22

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-137-8 (epub)

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7278-8072-7 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-84751-373-1 (trade paper)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being

  described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this

  publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons

  is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  ONE

  Monday, 5:27 p.m.

  By the time he reached the intersection with the Vine Street Expressway, Braydon Harris was convinced that God had it in for him.

  An electric storm like Judgment Day was flashing and thundering over the center of Philadelphia, and rain was hammering down so hard that it was almost impossible for him to see the highway ahead of him through the spray.

  On the back seat of his seven-year-old Dodge Caliber, Sukie was lying fast asleep, snuggled up under a red plaid blanket, clutching that moon-faced doll of hers. Sukie had been overjoyed that Braydon had kidnapped her from Melinda’s parents, but this evening it seemed as if the Lord was on the side of Melinda and the Maryland Family Courts, and that He wasn’t going to allow Braydon to make an easy getaway.

  As he drove north on the Schuylkill Expressway, past the Philadelphia Zoo, there was a bellow of thunder directly overhead, so loud that Braydon was almost deafened. Sukie woke up and screamed in fright, dropping her doll on the floor.

  ‘Daddy! I’m scared! What is it? I dropped Binkie! I dropped Binkie!’

  ‘It’s OK, sweetheart! Everything’s OK! It’s only thunder! It can’t hurt you!’

  ‘I’m scared, Daddy! I dropped Binkie! I can’t find her!’

  There was another devastating cannonade of thunder, and this time Sukie let out a high-pitched shriek, the kind of shriek that only terrified little girls can produce, almost beyond the range of human hearing. The rain began to drum down even harder on the Caliber’s roof, as if God were doing His level best to flatten it.

  ‘I can’t find Binkie! I’ve lost her! I can’t find Binkie!’

  ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart, it’s a rainstorm, that’s all! There’s nothing to be scared of!’

  ‘But Binkie’s scared!’

  Braydon twisted himself around in the driver’s seat and reached behind him with his right hand, trying to locate Sukie’s doll on the floor. At first he couldn’t feel it at all, but then he arched his back and lifted himself up in his seat a little more, and his fingertips touched the doll’s frizzy nylon hair.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he told Sukie. ‘I got her!’

  He managed to pinch Binkie’s hair between his index finger and his middle finger, and he was just about to pick her up when his windshield was flooded with blinding white light. Through his furiously-flapping windshield wipers he saw a huge truck sliding sideways across the expressway in front of him, and the single word DIAMOND.

  Even with both hands on the wheel, he probably couldn’t have steered the Caliber out of the path of the jackknifing semi. As it was, his right arm was pinioned between the two front seats, and he had to spin the wheel with his left hand only.

  He heard nothing. He didn’t even hear Sukie shrieking. The Caliber skidded through one hundred eighty degrees and slid backward underneath the semi’s trailer, so that its rear end was instantly crushed to half its height. Braydon was slammed face first into his inflated air-bag, smashing his nose. The side of the trailer hit the back of his seat, forcing him forward and pinning him against the steering wheel.

  He sat stunned for almost half a minute, with a beard of blood. Gradually, his hearing returned, and he heard rain pattering against the windshield and people shouting. He tried to turn around to see if Sukie was all right, but his right arm was jammed tight between his seat and the center console.

  ‘Sukie?’ he coughed. ‘Sukie, are you OK, sweetheart? Please tell Daddy you’re OK.’

  There was no reply. Only the sound of rain and rumbling thunder and people shouting, and the scribble-scribble-scribble of a distant siren.

  ‘Sukie! Can you hear me? Please tell Daddy you haven’t been hurt!’

  Through his rain-ribbed windshield he saw flashlights coming toward him, and dark silhouettes. Somebody was tugging at his door handle, and then knocking at his window.

  ‘Are you OK in there, buddy? Hold on – we’re going to get you out of there ASAP!’

  ‘My daughter,’ he said.

  ‘Hold on, buddy! We’re going to try to force the door open!’

  ‘My daughter!’ he repeated, although his ribs were pressed hard against the center of the steering wheel, and he couldn’t force enough air out of his lungs to manage anything louder than a croak. ‘My daughter’s in the back seat! She’s not answering me! I think she might be hurt!’

  More flashlights criss-crossed in front of his windshield, and then he heard a bang and a creak as somebody forced a tire iron into the side of his door.

  ‘Sukie?’ he called her. ‘Sukie, please answer me, sweetheart!’

  There was another creak, and he felt the Caliber rock from side to side as his rescuers tried to jimmy his door open. He twisted his head around as far as he could, but the vehicle had been crushed so low beneath the trailer that all he could see was the vinyl roof-lining. He prayed that Sukie had still been lying flat on her seat
at the moment of impact.

  ‘Dear God I’m so sorry I took her,’ Braydon gabbled to himself. ‘They told me I wasn’t fit to be her father, and look at me, I’m not. Dear God please tell me that I haven’t killed her.’

  He heard more sirens, wailing and screaming. He inhaled deeply so that he could shout to his would-be rescuers to hurry it up, but when he did so he breathed in the eye-watering pungency of gasoline fumes. The Caliber’s fuel tank must have been split open by the collision, and it had been almost full.

  ‘Hurry!’ he wheezed. ‘Hurry! The gas tank’s leaking!’

  ‘Don’t panic, buddy!’ called back one of his rescuers. ‘We almost got the door open.’

  Almost as soon as he had spoken, however, Braydon heard a soft explosive whumph, and then another, followed by a crackling sound.

  ‘Hurry!’ he shouted. ‘We’re on fire in here! For Christ’s sake, hurry! We’re on fire!’

  Hot air began to swarm through the gap between the front seats, and Braydon smelled shriveling vinyl and scorching wool. A spattering of molten plastic burned the back of his hand, and he tried even more desperately to wrench his arm free, but the force of the collision had trapped it too tightly. He could feel a thick crunching sensation inside his wrist, and for the first time since the crash, his arm began to throb with unbearable pain.

  ‘We’re burning up! Get us out of here! We’re burning up!’

  The interior of the Caliber was rapidly filling up with choking fumes. Braydon coughed and coughed, and then he burst into tears. He didn’t want to die like this. He didn’t want Sukie to die like this. She was five years old. She had all of her life ahead of her, but he had killed her.

  ‘God almighty we’re burning up in here!’

  TWO

  Monday, 5:34 p.m.

  The driver’s door burst open and was wrenched right back against its hinges. A big shaven-headed man reached inside with tattooed forearms and released Braydon’s seat belt. He grabbed hold of him and tried to drag him out but Braydon’s arm was still trapped.

  ‘My little girl – she’s in the back seat!’ Braydon told him. ‘Please get her out of there! Please!’

  ‘OK, buddy, just hold on! Somebody pass me that tire iron! Quick! Somebody pass me that goddamned tire iron!’

  ‘I called out to her—’ Braydon coughed. ‘I called out to her – but she didn’t answer! Maybe she’s unconscious. She’s only – she’s only five years old. Please, you have to get her out of there!’

  The big shaven-headed man forced the tire iron into the space between the driver’s seat and the center console. ‘When I say yank your arm out, you yank your arm out, OK?’

  Braydon nodded. The big shaven-headed man grunted, and leaned against the tire iron as hard as he could. There was a loud crack of breaking plastic, and then the man said, ‘Yank your arm out! Yank it out now!’

  Braydon twisted his arm forward, even though the pain from his shattered wrist almost made him pass out. As soon as he was free, the man heaved him bodily out of the driver’s seat as if he were a child and lifted him clear. Two other men took hold of his legs, and between them they hurried him over to the opposite side of the highway and laid him down on somebody’s raincoat. An ambulance had just arrived, its lights flashing red in the rain, and paramedics were opening up its rear doors.

  There was another ear-splitting rumble of thunder. Braydon felt rain splattering against his face and he could smell gasoline smoke on the wind.

  ‘My daughter!’ he said, hoarsely, trying to sit up. ‘My daughter’s still in there! I have to get her out of there!’

  A fire truck arrived with its klaxons blaring, followed almost nose-to-tail by a heavy rescue vehicle, and then a fire marshal’s van. Orange flames were crawling like the tentacles of a fiery octopus from underneath the trailer and people were shouting to each other to stay well back.

  ‘You have to let me go!’ Braydon demanded. But two paramedics helped Braydon’s rescuers to haul him up on to his feet, and between them they practically frogmarched him up to the back of the ambulance and hoisted him up the steps. They tried to make him lie flat on the gurney but he insisted on sitting up so that he could see what was happening.

  ‘Sir – please try to stay calm,’ said a black woman paramedic. ‘The firefighters are going to do everything they can to get your daughter out of there.’

  Braydon was coughing so hard that he couldn’t answer her. He tried to swing his legs off the gurney but the paramedic pushed him back. She was chunkily built, and unexpectedly strong.

  ‘Please, sir. Please stay here. There’s nothing you can do.’

  ‘My daughter’s dying in there!’ Braydon told her. ‘My daughter could be dead already!’

  ‘I know that, sir. But all we can do right now is pray for her.’

  The firefighters were spraying the wreck with compressed-air foam, and clouds of it were dancing across the highway and flying up into the air. The orange flames reluctantly retreated and shrank back under the trailer, and then they died out altogether. Six or seven firefighters approached the burned-out shell of Braydon’s Caliber and Braydon could hear them shouting out for hydraulic lifting equipment and cutters.

  ‘You have to let me out of here!’ said Braydon. ‘That’s my Sukie in there! That’s my little girl!’

  ‘Sir – please,’ said the paramedic. And at that moment, two officers from the Philadelphia Highway Patrol appeared at the back of the ambulance, in their distinctive crushed caps and black leather coats and riding boots. One of them was tall and thin and sandy-haired, and the other was stocky, with a walrus moustache.

  ‘Sir, you really need to stay here. There’s absolutely nothing you can do.’

  ‘Oh God,’ Braydon wept. He pressed his left hand over his mouth. ‘Oh God, it was all my fault.’

  ‘I don’t think you should blame yourself, sir,’ said the sandy-haired patrolman. ‘That semi had a multiple blow-out and skidded clear across to the northbound side of the highway and there wasn’t nothing you could have humanly done to avoid it. Wasn’t nothing that nobody could have done.’

  ‘Here,’ said the paramedic. She pulled up his sleeve and gave him a shot of oxycodone for the pain. Then she strapped an FLA splint to his fractured wrist, while the patrolmen asked him his name, and his address, and Sukie’s name.

  ‘Susan Amelia Harris,’ said Braydon. ‘Born April seventeenth, two thousand seven.’ He didn’t tell them that he had long ago lost custody of her, and that he had been kidnapping her, and taking her back to his home in Connecticut. What would have been the point of it? He felt guilty enough already.

  When the patrolmen had finished questioning him, he sat in the ambulance watching the firefighters at work with their cutters and their spreaders. Now that the oxycodone was beginning to take effect, he was beginning to feel strangely detached, as if that burned-out wreck on the other side of the highway wasn’t really his car at all. The paramedic gently lifted his elbow into a sling, and all the time she kept on asking him ‘Is that OK, sir? Is that comfortable? Does that hurt?’ but he didn’t answer her, or even glance at her. If he had answered her, that would have confirmed that he was really here, and that his daughter Sukie was really trapped inside his car, and that she had probably been killed.

  ‘How are you feeling, sir?’ the paramedic asked him. ‘You’re not feeling faint at all, are you?’ But he still refused to respond. I’m not feeling anything. This is not me.

  It seemed to take hours for the firefighters to attach a steel hawser to the front of a fire truck and drag the Caliber out from underneath the trailer, so that they could begin to open up its crushed rear section. With a last few spiteful flickers and a last few sulky rumbles, the thunder and lightning were gradually moving off toward the north-east, but the rain continued steadily to dredge across the surface of the highway.

  Braydon saw showers of sparks as the vehicle’s roof pillars were cut apart, and then four firefighters lifted the roof clear off
and laid it down on the road.

  Three paramedics reached inside the rear seat. Braydon began to shiver uncontrollably. Oh God almighty she’s dead and I’ve killed her. Oh God have mercy on me. Oh God, my poor little Sukie.

  The woman paramedic unhooked an oxygen mask and pressed it over his face. ‘Just breathe normally, sir. We don’t want you going into shock.’

  Braydon rolled his eyes and stared up at her. He took four deep breaths and then he lifted the mask away. ‘She was so darn unhappy. That was the trouble. She kept on begging me to take her away with me. But now look what I’ve done.’

  ‘Sir, this was an accident. You heard what the officers told you. This was not your fault. But now I think we need to take you to the ER. There’s nothing more that you can do here.’

  ‘Please – I have to see her. I have to know for sure.’

  Just then, another ambulance backed up to the wreck of Braydon’s Caliber, and its rear doors opened. Less than a minute later, it sped away, with its siren screaming.

  ‘What was that? Was that Sukie? Where are they taking her?’

  A gray-haired paramedic walked across to the back of the ambulance and climbed up the steps. For some odd reason, he reminded Braydon of the actor Lloyd Bridges. ‘We got your daughter out, sir. She’s alive.’

  Braydon coughed, and coughed again. He could hardly breathe. ‘How badly is she hurt?’

  The paramedic looked serious. ‘I can’t yet tell you the full extent of her injuries, sir, not until the doctors have examined her. But I have to warn you that she’s suffered some very serious burns.’

  ‘Oh, God. Oh, God, no.’

  ‘We’ve sent her directly to the burns center at Temple University Hospital. It’s the finest burns unit in the country, bar none, and it’s only a few minutes from here. We’ll take you there right now, so that you can be with her.’

  He climbed down and closed the ambulance doors behind him. The woman paramedic said, ‘Why don’t you lie down, sir, so’s I can strap you in? You’ll be safer.’

  Braydon shook his head. ‘Who cares if I’m safe? What difference does it make?’

  ‘It makes all the difference, sir. From now on, your Sukie’s going to need you more than ever.’