by Shaun Hutson
He guided the motorbike around a bend in the road, kicking several tree branches aside. The wind must have been stronger than he thought. It whistled through the tall hedges, a shrill banshee wail. Gary trudged on, now feeling quite warm from the effort of pushing the Kawasaki.
The car was parked about two hundred yards ahead of him.
There was a kind of makeshift lay-by, little more than a gap in the right hand hedge with a muddy verge before it but the vehicle was standing motionless there, lights on, smoke rising from its exhaust.
Gary smiled thinly to himself. Maybe the driver would give him a lift into Hinkston. He could wedge the 750 into the boot. Surely the bloke wouldn’t mind. He increased his pace in an effort to reach the car before it pulled away.
There was something familiar about it.
Something…
He was about fifty yards away when he realised it was the same car that had almost forced him into the hedge further back on the road.
Gary felt the anger rise within him briefly but he fought it back. If the driver was willing to give him a lift, then the previous aberration could be overlooked. He might mention it in passing, just as a joke. But, he reasoned, why make an issue out of it?
He drew closer to the car and heard the engine idling in the stillness of the night.
Maybe the driver wasn’t alone. He might have his girlfriend in there with him. Maybe he’d pulled over for a quick one. Gary chuckled then shook his head. If they were romping about on the back seat the driver wasn’t likely to have left his engine running and all his lights on.
The dull purring of the car engine continued to fill the otherwise noiseless night.
The wind had slackened slightly although the tree branches still swayed as if pulled by invisible strings.
Gary rolled his bike up to within twenty feet of the car and peered into the vehicle.
It was empty.
The bloke must have nipped behind the hedge for a slash, he thought, moving closer. He’d just wait until he came back then ask for a lift.
Gary leant the bike against the hedge and walked closer to the car, admiring the sleek bodywork, deciding that he would start saving up for driving lessons. He liked the bike but a car had more class. He walked around it, patting the bonnet as if he were inspecting the car with a view to purchase.
The engine continued to purr.
Gary glanced behind him towards the hedge, wondering where the driver could have got to. He sighed and continued with his tour of inspection of the vehicle, sliding his hand almost unconsciously to one of the handles.
The door opened as he pulled.
He frowned.
This was weird, he thought. It was bad enough leaving all the lights on and the engine running but to leave the car unlocked too? The driver was either very trusting or very stupid. Gary tried the rear door.
That too was unlocked.
He walked around to the driver’s side and tried that door as well.
Not surprisingly he found it unlocked.
The car moved.
Only a matter of inches but the motion was enough to startle Gary who took a step back, realising that the handbrake must be off. The car came to a halt a couple of inches further on, engine still ticking over. Gary stepped forward again, reaching for the handle, deciding he’d at least reach inside and pull up the handbrake, stop the car rolling down the slight hill which sloped away ahead of it. He reached for the door.
Hands gripped the back of his head.
He felt uncontrollable force and strength at the base of his skull as two strong hands fixed themselves around his neck, fingers digging into his throat.
Taken by surprise he was helpless, unable to stop himself as the hands forced him forward with incredible speed, slamming his head into the driver’s side window of the car.
The impact opened a hairline cut across his forehead and a thin trickle of blood oozed down his face.
As he shouted in pain and surprise, he felt himself being propelled forward a second time, with even more force.
His face was driven into the top of the car door and he felt searing agony fill his head as two of his front teeth were shattered, one of them forced backwards into his tongue. Blood filled his mouth and spilled down his chin as he tried to twist, to fight off his attacker.
But his hidden assailant was taking full advantage of Gary’s helplessness and another sickening contact with the car roof splintered two more of the youth’s teeth and chipped the bone of his lower jaw. He tried to scream but the pain had already driven him to the edge of consciousness. As the hands relaxed their grip on the back of his neck, Gary Sinclair fell across the bonnet of the car then slid to the ground, his vision clouded by agony. He rolled onto ·his back on the muddy verge, looking up at his attacker who stood over him for brief seconds then knelt beside him, grabbing a handful of his hair, lifting his bloodied face as if to inspect the damage.
It was then that Gary saw the knife.
The blade was about ten inches long. Slightly thicker than a knitting needle.
Gary opened his mouth, moaning as he felt fresh waves of pain from his smashed jaw. He tried to squirm away from the hand which held him so firmly but it was useless.
The point of the knife actually brushed his upper eyelid and he felt his bowels loosen as fear overcame him.
The wickedly sharp point of the knife punctured the bulging orb of his right eye effortlessly.
It was pushed with no haste. It wasn’t driven into the writhing boy’s eye, it was inserted with a kind of sadistic precision.
And now he did find the breath to scream but the frantic bellow was cut off abruptly as two more inches of the blade disappeared into his eye socket, pushed with an even pressure.
Two inches.
Three.
Four.
Vitreous liquid spurted onto his cheek, mingling with the blood which already covered his skin.
The eye seemed to burst like a water-filled balloon. The white turned red and the orb seemed to collapse in upon itself as the blade was pushed deeper. One final surge of pressure and it punctured the frontal lobe of the brain.
Gary Sinclair shuddered then lay still.
The knife was pulled free then the driver of the car calmly unlocked the boot and pushed it open.
It took only a moment to lift Gary’s body and push it unceremoniously into the rear compartment of the vehicle. The lid was slammed down and the driver walked unhurriedly around to the door, slid behind the wheel and guided the vehicle back out onto the road.
Once again, the tail lights were swallowed by the blackness.
Two
It looked as if someone had been shading beneath her eyes with charcoal.
Susan Hacket looked at the reflection which stared back at her from the mirror and sighed. She picked up the brush which lay on the dressing table and swept it through her hair, listening to the static electricity crackling. She fluffed up her shaggy locks with her fingertips then reached for her make-up. She plucked a brush from the hand-shaped container on her left and began applying foundation to the pale visage which confronted her. The brushes and the make-up had been a present for her twenty-fifth birthday, just seven months earlier. But, at the moment, she felt a hundred and twenty-five.
Susan sighed again, tiring of her own efforts to brighten her appearance. She got to her feet, crossed the landing to the bathroom and washed the foundation off, towelling her face dry, glancing at herself in the bathroom mirror this time.
She was grateful that she didn’t feel as rough as she looked.
Even the ravages of so much worry, so many sleepless nights, could not hide her natural attractiveness. She rarely wore heavy make-up. People were always telling her she didn’t need it. But, in the last couple of months she had taken to wearing it on these nightly visits. Taken to making an effort. He had always liked her in make-up before, had always complimented her on her appearance. What reason was there to stop? Just because…
&n
bsp; She splashed her face with more water, dried it a second time then returned to the bedroom where she hastily but expertly applied some mascara and eye-liner. The dark smudges beneath her eyes didn’t look too bad she told herself. A few good nights’ sleep and they would vanish. Exactly when those nights would come she had no idea.
She pulled on a sweatshirt and jeans, stepped into a pair of short suede boots and headed back out onto the landing once more. The door directly opposite her was slightly ajar. Sue crossed to it and moved silently into the room, careful not to collide with the half-a-dozen mobiles which hung from the ceiling. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Dumbo. Postman Pat. All swayed gently in the slight breeze which wafted through the window. Sue rubbed her hands together, thinking how cold it was turning. She crossed to the window and closed it, pressing a hand to the radiator as she stepped away.
She moved close to the bed and crouched down beside it, pulling the sheet back from the tiny sleeping form cocooned within it.
Lisa Hacket lay still as her mother gently brushed some strands of fine, silver-blonde hair from her face. Then Sue leant across and kissed her four-year-old daughter on the cheek.
‘I love you,’ she whispered, then slowly straightened up and crept out of the room.
At the foot of the stairs she picked up her handbag and jacket then popped her head round the door of the sitting room.
‘I’m off now, Caroline,’ she said, smiling. ‘I’ll be back in a couple of hours.’
From the sofa, Caroline Fearns turned and smiled. A bright, pretty, sixteen-year-old with uncomfortably large breasts, she nodded and smiled broadly at Sue.
‘I really am sorry I had to call you at such short notice,’ Sue said. ‘But John’s got a meeting at the school and I’m not sure what time he’ll be back. If he gets back before me could you tell him I’ve left some food in the oven for him, please?’
Caroline nodded briskly, smiled again then turned her attention back to the TV screen. She enjoyed baby-sitting for the Hacket’s. They paid her well and they had a colour TV as well as a video. Her own father refused to buy a colour TV despite the fact that, during snooker matches, he spent the entire time complaining about not being able to figure out which balls the players were trying to pot. But besides the money and the TV there was an added bonus. Mr Hacket always insisted on taking her home in his car after the baby-sitting was over. Caroline found him unbearably sexy (even though he was pushing thirty). She wished her English teacher looked like him.
She heard the front door close and glanced at her watch.
6.35 p.m.
She’d wait until the soap opera she was watching had finished then she’d make a cup of tea. She stretched out contentedly on the sofa.
As Sue stepped out into the night she shivered. The wind whistled around her and she pulled up the collar of her jacket as she headed for her car, fumbling in her handbag for the keys. She slid behind the wheel of the Metro and started the engine, checking her reflection briefly in the rear-view mirror. Cheerful enough? No cracks in the mask?
She pulled away, making a note to stop off at the garage and get some flowers.
Flowers were so important.
They saw her leave.
Hidden by the darkness, sitting in the car parked about fifty yards down the street, they watched her as she pulled away.
6.38 pm.
One of them glanced at the house, at the light burning in the front room.
They would wait a little longer.
Three
He heard the thud from above and squinted at the ceiling, as if expecting it to cave in. But no cracks appeared, there was no rending of beams or crashing of concrete. The ceiling remained as unblemished now as it had been ten minutes ago when he’d first fixed his eyes on the spot above his head.
John Hacket draped one arm across his forehead, catching sight of his watch in the process. The ticking sounded thunderous in the relative silence of the bedroom. As even as his own low breathing.
‘Penny for your thoughts.’
The voice came from beside him, a slight Irish lilt to it.
Hacket turned his head slowly to look at Nikki Reeves. She was looking at him with those large brown eyes, fixing him in the kind of gaze which had first drawn him to her. There were a thousand clichés for those eyes, for that look.
Come to bed eyes. Hypnotic glances.
Hacket almost laughed.
How about, Screw me and to hell with your wife eyes?
She asked him again, brushing hair from her face.
‘What are you thinking about?’
Hacket shook his head dismissively, watching as she raised herself up onto one elbow to look down on him. Her right hand rested on his chest, her index finger tracing patterns across his skin. He could smell her perfume. He knew the smell well. He should do, he’d bought it for her. The delicate aroma mingled with the stronger musky scent of their own post-coital exertions.
‘What makes you think I’ve got something on my mind?’ Hacket asked her, raising one finger and gently running it along her bottom lip.
She flicked out her tongue and licked the tip of the probing digit.
‘Because you’re quiet,’ she said, smiling.
He shrugged.
‘Be thankful for small mercies.’
Hacket lay still while she continued stroking his chest, only now his eyes were on her, taking in the details of her face and upper body. The sheet had slipped down to reveal her breasts, the nipples still erect. He looked at her face and, again, found himself lost in those eyes. His finger strayed from her lips and he took to stroking her cheek, enjoying the smoothness of her skin. And, all the time he could smell her perfume. It was one of the things which had first attracted him to her. The fact that she was good-looking had seemed almost secondary. Romance begins in many different ways and Hacket could think of a thousand more clichés to describe that particular peculiarity which men and women put so much faith in. But he knew that this was not romance. It was an affair. Pure and simple.
He almost smiled again at the irony of that phrase. There was nothing pure about it and simplicity was rapidly eroded when a man took a lover.
She was twenty-two, eight years younger than Hacket. The affair had been going on for the past three months. Ever since…
He tried to push the thought from his mind but it persisted.
Ever since Sue’s father had become ill.
Hacket wondered if he was trying to justify his actions to himself. Even trying to shift the blame for his indiscretions onto his wife.
Her father was dying. She was worried. She hadn’t enough time for Hacket so he’d found a lover. There, he thought, bitterly, it was simple when you thought it through.
Nikki leant across him and pressed her lips to his. He felt her tongue flicking urgently against his teeth then it slipped inside his mouth, stirring the warm wetness. Hacket responded fiercely and when they finally separated both were breathing heavily. He could feel her nipples pressing into his chest, his own erection now nudging her belly as she lay closer to him.
After a moment or two she pulled herself across him and sat on the side of the bed.
‘Was it something I said?’ he asked, watching as she got to her feet and reached for a baggy T-shirt on the chair nearby.
She smiled and slipped it on, the voluminous folds hiding her shapely figure as she padded towards the door. She paused there, silhouetted by the soft light which was spilling from the sitting room.
‘I’m hungry,’ she told him. ‘Do you want something?’ He shook his head.
‘No thanks I’ll…’ He coughed. ‘I’m fine.’
I’ll have something to eat when I get home. I’ll eat the food that my wife has prepared for me, Hacket thought. He exhaled deeply, almost angrily, and sat up, reaching for his cigarettes, pulling the packet from the pocket of his trousers. He lit a Dunhill and sucked hard on it. Sue would be at the hospital by now, he thought, glancing at his watch. The nightly vigil
. Christ, why did she torture herself like that? Every single bloody night she was at the hospital. He blew out a stream of smoke watching it dissipate slowly in the air. And how much longer was it going to last? No one knew, no one could tell her. The same way no one could tell him how long his affair with Nikki was going to continue. Nagging doubts at the back of his mind told him he should end it now. But the doubts only came when he was at home, when he was away from her. When he was with her the desire to end the relationship wasn’t so pressing. He didn’t love her, that much he knew, but he felt for her more strongly than he should have done. She filled a gap in his life, a gap which should never have been there to begin with. Was he blaming Sue again? The role of neglected, misunderstood husband didn’t suit him particularly well.
How about husband who’s feeling sorry for himself?
Hacket took another drag on the cigarette.
How about unfeeling, selfish bastard? That seemed to suit him perfectly.
Hacket’s philosophical musings were interrupted by Nikki’s return. She was carrying a glass of milk and a plate with a couple of hastily-made sandwiches stacked on it.
She shivered, commented how cold it was in the kitchen then sat down on the bed beside him and took a bite from one of the sandwiches.
‘Pig,’ he said, watching her as she ate.
‘Oink, oink,’ she replied, giggling.
He snaked an arm around her waist and drew her closer to him, kissing her ear. She put down the sandwich, kissed him lightly on the tip of the nose then reached for the glass of milk. She took a mouthful but didn’t swallow it. Instead she leant closer to him, the white liquid staining her lips. As she kissed him he opened his mouth and allowed her to pass some of the milk to him. When they parted she was smiling broadly. She allowed one hand to drop to his thigh, stroking the hair which grew so thickly there. Then her fingers were exploring higher, her nails gently raking his scrotum before gliding around his stiffening penis.
