The Spinetinglers Anthology 2010

by Неизвестный

The line went dead. “Disappointing,” the old man said.

  ***

  It was Christmas Eve.

  Roberts reclined on his leather sofa, TV remote in one hand, a tumbler of whisky in the other. He flicked through the TV channels listlessly, unable to concentrate or relax. He wished he had never got involved with Goole. It was true, Jameson was dead, and with that death the threat to his family had diminished. But the violent nature of the death was creating a lot of questions. There was nothing to link the murder back to him - yet - but Goole's behaviour was unpredictable. Could he be trusted not to implicate Roberts in the murder?

  Two days had gone by and there had been no further calls. It was possible, perhaps, that he had taken the money and disappeared.

  Roberts rose from the sofa, and walked across to his balcony window. His apartment in Victoria overlooked the Thames, its fifth floor elevation offering an excellent view east across the river, the twinkling lights of the city shimmering in the black water.

  His daughter Katie enjoyed the view when she visited, asking him to identify various buildings that caught her eye. He winced as he thought of her, and drained the contents of the tumbler. He was not sure if he would see her this Christmas. He had been separated from his wife for over a year, his marriage failing as his career prospered. He liked to think he was a good cop, making a difference, but the lines had become blurred recently. He was no longer sure if he was the hero or the villain.

  A sound from behind stirred him from his thoughts.

  He was alone in the flat, but the sound had come from the hallway. Frowning, he walked back to the sofa. He put down the tumbler, and switched off the TV using the remote.

  He listened carefully.

  Silence, but now he could detect a faint burning smell.

  He approached the door that led from the lounge into the hallway, but before he was halfway there, he froze. A tapping noise came from behind the door. Almost like ... someone knocking gently on the door. The front door to the apartment was locked. Only he had a key. Yet someone had gained entry.

  He moved across the room and flicked off the light switch, throwing the room into darkness. Beneath the door frame, he saw flickering orange light.

  The tapping noise came again. Someone was there, behind the door.

  Roberts moved carefully over to the coffee-table, searching for a weapon. He could smell smoke clearly now. His hands closed around a metal photo frame. Not ideal, but it would have to do. He would rush over to the door, surprise whoever was there. Probably some junkie kid, looking for stuff to steal, checking to see if the lounge was empty. Using matches or a candle to see where they were going. Roberts felt his anger rising. They had picked the wrong flat to break into, that was for sure.

  “Roberts.”

  A deep voice, from behind the door. Goading.

  “Roberts. I've come to see you.”

  It didn't sound like any kid he knew.

  He hesitated, but anger and indignation got the better of him. He ran over to the door, pulling it wide open, raising the photo frame, ready to bring the sharp angle down.

  A wave of heat blasted his face. Standing before him was a vision straight from Hell. Jameson, his face charred and scorched, orange flame still licking at his flesh and his clothes. A blackened, bloodied Santa costume, hanging from his body like rags. Eyes, red points of smouldering fire.

  “Hello, Roberts. Bet you thought you'd seen the last of me.”

  He stepped forward, into the lounge, and Roberts instinctively backed away from the intense heat. It wasn't possible that Jameson could be alive, his mind was unable to comprehend what his senses revealed. He backtracked further, then he tripped and fell, the coffee table jarring painfully into his spine.

  Jameson advanced, pieces of charred clothing flaking from him as he moved, treading black smouldering scorch marks into the carpet.

  A smoke alarm activated, and ear-splitting noise shot through Roberts' skull.

  “You had me killed, you bastard,” Jameson shouted over the noise of the alarm. “I know you did.” A trickle of dark blood issued from his mouth as he spoke. “Now it's payback time.”

  Roberts backed away, fear in his eyes. “Get out!” He screamed above the noise. He threw the photo frame, but Jameson swatted it aside contemptuously. Roberts' back came up against the window.

  “I should kill you now,” Jameson snarled. “But I want to see you suffer first. I have a promise to keep with you. I said your family would pay if you got in my way. Well tonight, they'll get a visit from Santa they won't forget.”

  “No! Roberts screamed. Leave my family out of this. Don't you dare touch them!”

  “I'll be back, Roberts,” Jameson promised.

  “No!” Roberts shouted, but the heat and the glow had suddenly disappeared, and he was alone in the room, a vortex of swirling smoke the only evidence that remained of the flaming apparition.

  Roberts rose to his feet, his legs and arms shaking uncontrollably. Had he gone insane? Was he hallucinating? But the destruction in the room was all too real. The carpet continued to burn and smoulder, the door and ceiling were scorched and black. Dark drops of blood stained the carpet.

  He walked in a daze over to the smoke alarm and pulled out the battery; suddenly the room was silent.

  He rushed to the phone. Hitting the speed dial, he listened as his wife's phone rang and rang, with no answer. “Come on,” muttered. “Answer, pick up!” The ringing tone continued, then finally switched to a recorded message. Roberts hung up and hit the next speed dial, his wife's mobile. Again, he heard a ring tone, but no answer. “Please,” he whispered. “Not my family.”

  “Hello?” His wife's voice.

  “Anna? Thank God you're OK. Where are you? Are you at home? You've got to leave straight away.” He was suddenly struck cold with fear. “Is Katie with you?”

  “David, slow down. I can hardly hear you. Of course Katie is with me. It's Christmas Eve.”

  “You've got to get out of the house right now.”

  “We're not in the house. We're at my mother's. You know that. What's going on?”

  Roberts breathed a sigh of relief. “OK, I want you to stay there. Don't answer the phone, don't open the door, don't do anything. I'm coming over, straight away.”

  “David -”

  He hung up. Where were his car keys?

  There was a knock on the door. “Is everything OK in there? We heard noise. And we can smell smoke.” It was the old couple from across the hall.

  Roberts took a deep breath. He had to stay calm, think. He walked to the door. “Everything's OK. I just knocked over a candle. I had the TV on.” He picked up his keys and mobile, returned to the lounge, ignoring any further questions from outside.

  Anna's mother's house was in Wiltshire, miles away. Jameson would never find them there. Would he? If he could just appear of out thin air, he might be there right now. He needed to get out of this apartment, and get over to them as soon as he could. But another thought was nagging at him, one that would not go away - Goole.

  He found the hidden number on his mobile and sent the call.

  “Good evening, Robert.”

  “What the fuck have you done?”

  “I don't know what you mean.”

  “Don't play games with me, Goole, Jameson was here! What have you done?”

  “You know what I want, Roberts.”

  “I can't do it, you fucker! I don't have access to that kind of information.”

  “That's too bad.”

  And across town, in a neatly decorated detached house in north London, a scream of rage rang out as Jameson's flaming ghost searched through empty bedrooms.

  ***

  Katie Roberts slept peacefully inside the guest room at her Grandmother's house. At the foot of her bed lay a festive stocking, bulging with presents. She was a little too old at the age of ten to believe in Father Christmas, but she had been more than happy to go along with the game.

  Sometime
after midnight, perhaps when her slightly drunken mother had crept in, her grandmother's Terrier, Jess had entered the room and leapt up onto the duvet.

  Katie had placed one arm around the dog without even waking.

  Outside, thick clouds had drifted over, bringing a soft sprinkling of snow in the early hours before dawn.

  Jess woke from her slumber, her eyes darting about the room, ears erect, nose twitching. Her small canine head looked round; she rose up on the bed to a standing position.

  Across the room, a tiny orange glow had appeared in mid-air, and a faint trace of smoke entered the room.

  Jess leapt down from the bed, growling softly, the fur on the back of her body raised.

  The orange point of light grew in size, and its shape transformed until the outline of a man was revealed.

  Jess growled sharply, and Katie stirred, turned over in her sleep.

  The outline became distinct and vivid, and then with a final flicker of flame, the burning apparition of Jameson materialised; a leering, grotesque Santa Claus, dripping blood.

  Jess retreated, whimpering softly as Jameson looked around. He saw the sleeping form of the girl and smiled. “Santa's here,” he grinned. He stepped towards her sleeping form, and Jess, despite her fear, ran forward.

  “Fucking dog,” Jameson snarled. “I'll kick you straight into Hell.”

  ***

  Goole sat underneath a large oak tree, staring up at the snow as it drifted down. A thin white layer had settled on his wide shoulders and legs as the flakes swirled and drifted under the tree's boughs.

  He was in St. James' park, near to the lake, a favourite spot of his, somewhere he came to often to look up at the sky and ponder.

  A few feet away from him lay a black bin liner. Inside were the incinerated remains of Jameson, nothing more than burnt and charred bones and fragments that he had stolen from the morgue the previous day. The snow had begun to settle on the bag, too.

  Goole's phone rang, and he plucked it from his pocket and answered. “Roberts? I didn't expect to hear from you again.”

  Roberts' voice came back, on a speaker phone, distant, the hiss of road noise and speeding engine competing with him. “Listen here, you bastard. I've got an address, names, everything. You won't believe the strings I've had to pull to get you this. Now for fuck's sake, call him off!”

  Goole's weathered and creased face cracked into a smile. “I knew you could do it. Just text me the details and I'll see what I can do.”

  “For fuck's sake, Goole.”

  The line went dead, and the old man sat back against the tree. A minute later, his phone chimed. He extended a withered hand out to the phone, read the message, and then slowly got to his feet, shaking the snow from his clothes.

  He picked up the sack and said a few appropriate words, then tossed it into the lake.

  “That wasn't too difficult,” he said to himself.

  ***

  Jameson's booted, smouldering foot swung towards the terrier, but it never connected. His spirit form cried out, flickered once and then vanished, leaving nothing but a patch of smoke in the air and two scorch marks on the carpet.

  Jess crept forward cautiously, sniffing, whining softly. But the strange and terrifying man had vanished. She leapt back on to the duvet and curled up once again next to the still sleeping girl.

  ***

  Roberts arrived soon after, just before the first light of Christmas Day. He woke the house with his frantic banging, and he collapsed on the floor when he saw his family were safe.

  “What the hell is going on?” Anna asked him. “We decided to ignore your call last night, you weren't making any sense. I imagine you were drunk again.”

  Roberts stared back at her with tired eyes. “I was concerned,” he said.

  Anna's mother insisted on giving him a bed for a while at least. “It is Christmas, after all.”

  Sometime later, he awoke to the aroma of Christmas dinner.

  Anna entered the guest room where he now slept. “Well you're here, so you might as well join us.” She looked to the centre of the floor, where a section of the carpet had been burnt. “I've no idea what happened there.”

  Roberts did not like to think about it. “Who knows?”

  There were a whole tonne of problems that needed sorting out. The murder investigation, the damage to his flat, his threats to kill a fellow police officer unless they revealed highly confidential witness protection information.

  But it could all wait. It was Christmas Day. He was with his family, there was a meal waiting. He would enjoy it while he could.

  He followed Anna into the dining room, poured himself glass of wine from the bottle on the table.

  “Happy Christmas,” he smiled.

  ***

  The house was modest, a cottage in Sussex, near to the coast.

  Somewhere quiet, out of the way.

  The old man hummed softly to himself as he climbed the staircase. Christmas Day, it was snowing outside, and here he was, sharing the day with his family, just as it should be.

  Family were very important to him.

  He had not seen these two for many years. They were direct relatives. Descendants. The son and daughter of a bastard son - his blood flowed in their veins.

  They had proved to be very elusive, even going so far as to make use of a victim relocation scheme, after his previous run-in with them so many years before. But there were always ways to find people, if you were determined. And Goole was nothing if not determined.

  What was that tune he was humming? He had heard it somewhere recently - yes, the club. An old Frank Sinatra tune, but the name escaped him.

  He had slipped off his clothes already, venturing downstairs only to find a Champagne glass. His hosts were so accommodating. The bath was waiting.

  He had tossed their bodies down the stairs, and they lay where they fell, twisted and crumpled near the front door. There were splashes and smears of blood all the way down the stairs, on the banister, the walls, the carpet. There was blood on every surface in the bathroom. But he was sure he had managed to collect enough.

  Goole caught sight of his wrinkled, sinewy body in the bathroom mirror, and he chuckled softly. He lowered his large frame into the bath. The blood was cold now, but the coolness felt good against his skin. He reclined back, letting his legs and torso sink into the dark red liquid, then he scooped the Champagne glass in the blood and raised it to his lips.

  He could feel the effects beginning in his legs already. The blood, soaking into his ancient skin. He drank deeply from the glass, then sunk his body lower into the bath. He felt the precious fluid penetrating his body, the wrinkles smoothing out, the sinews strengthening, muscles re-growing. His eyes began to emerge from their sunken sockets, his hair thicken and grow darker.

  When he finally emerged from the bath, almost every drop of the blood had been absorbed. The reflection smiling back at him in the mirror opposite was a tall, powerfully built man in the prime of his youth.

  His own flesh and blood. They were becoming harder to find these days, but the wait had been worth it - he would be good for another thirty or so years now.

  The Sinatra tune came back to him again, loud and clear in his mind.

  The Christmas Waltz.

  “Merry fucking Christmas,” he shouted out.

  The Chamber

  By Paul Johnson-Jovanovic

  Year: 2107

  Crime has always been a problem, hasn’t it? It’s always been a burden on society, a kind of disease that can never seem to be cured, never be cleansed from humanity. Never have people felt 100% safe in their homes; we have never had the pleasure of this utopia.

  The punishments have changed over the years: beheading, hanging, electrocution, or imprisonment. The threat of what is perceived to be the ultimate sacrifice, the taking of a person’s life, seems not to have deterred the most resolute of criminals. Spurred on by hardship or greed, they inflict pain upon people, with no regard for their v
ictims.

  By the year 2080, crime had become such a problem that the foundations of society seemed to be at breaking point. Prisons were full. Building new ones wasn’t an option. The government wanted to invest their money in something that would make a difference, make a change – a big change.

  The old punishments were looked at, examined, and dismissed. Execution and imprisonment were not thought to be sufficient deterrents. Harsh times called for harsh measures.

  The government had to ask itself one question: what punishment could be so bad that it would deter even the most hardened of criminals? It didn’t take them long to come up with the answer.

  What is the most precious possession that we have? What gives us the hope of a further existence after death; the hope of immortality. Yes, you’ve probably guessed it: the human soul. We all have one, and we all – with only the exception of the maddest fools – value it as priceless beyond the wildest earthly riches.

  In the year 2083, the government announced the launch of a new scheme to deal with crime. For years scientists had been experimenting, first to try and prove the existence of the human soul, then to try and isolate it, capture it, and imprison it … until a way could be found to destroy it … if it could be destroyed?

  This, as you can imagine, caused outrage amongst the religious community. It was an effrontery to God, they said. He should be the only one to dispense the ultimate justice: the destruction of the human soul. They said it would anger God, bring His wrath down upon mankind. But the government ploughed on ahead regardless.

  The public thought it was a waste of time and money; most people never believed that the soul could be extracted from a person while they were still alive. And some even doubted whether the soul even existed, despite scientific evidence that proved otherwise.

  The world marvelled at the capture of the first human soul. It finally answered the question – the ultimate question – that had been asked by many a learned scholar since the dawn of humanity: is there life after death. Eternity in Heaven beckoned the meek. Eternity in Hell beckoned the darker side of society, unless they mended their ways.