“He came from the lightning. He is the storm and he will never pass,” said the figure. Although it felt to Patrick like he had heard the voice in his head.
“Who?” said Patrick.
“Evil was banished from here. But evil is coming home,” said the voice.
“What...” began Patrick, but the figure had gone. It had simply winked out of existence. Patrick looked up and saw a huge pylon towering above him. He could hear the metallic buzz of the electricity flowing through it.
A hand suddenly fell on his shoulder and he spun round. The figure was there again, but this time he could see its face. The skin and flesh looked like it had been burned away leaving a skeletal face looming out of the darkness at him. The eyes were still intact and they burned bright red and felt to Patrick like they were looking right into his soul. He tried to scream but the apparition clamped its hands around his throat and began to squeeze, cutting off his air supply. He grabbed at the hands and began to slowly pull them away from his neck. It took every ounce of strength to tear them away and he could feel the bony fingers scraping against his skin and drawing blood. He freed himself from the murderous hands and stepped backwards. He felt his balance beginning to desert him and he fell backwards. He braced himself for the impact against the hard concrete floor of the driveway....
....and he jerked awake in the bed. He sat up quickly, gasping for breath. It wasn’t dark in the room anymore, there was sunlight blazing through the window in the ceiling. His heart was pounding furiously in his chest causing black spots to dance around in front of his eyes. He looked around to try and see if there was any sign of the figure anywhere but there was nothing. The bedroom door was firmly shut. He looked to the side of him and saw Jenny still asleep next to him. She had kicked the duvet off in the night and she was naked save for a pair of black pants. He looked at the smooth skin of her body and began to remember exactly what they had got up to the night before. It had been a good night alright. Not the night that they had quite anticipated having, but a good one nonetheless. The nightmare began to fade and his heart resumed normal function. He turned his mind to all the fun himself and Jenny had been having until the early hours of the morning. He smiled to himself and got out of bed and reached for his trousers. He had never been one for walking around in the nude, he just felt far too shy even though he had lived on his own for many years. He would always convince himself that the moment he walked around naked then someone would come to the door or he would fall down the stairs and break his leg or some other ridiculous situation. He stood up, zipped and fastened and then made his way out of the bedroom door towards the bathroom. He went inside and locked the door behind him. He urinated, flushed and then went to wash his hands in the sink. He checked his reflection in the mirror above the sink and he froze.
There were three deep scratches on the right side of his neck, exactly the same spot where the figure had scraped him in his nightmare. His heart felt like it had stopped for a moment before it began to pound heavily in his chest. He felt a sweat begin to break out on his forehead and he began to feel dizzy. He gripped the edge of the sink, wondering if he was going to fall to the floor or throw up. He breathed deeply and tried to get himself under control. There had to be a rational explanation. Things like this didn’t happen in real life. After a few moments he managed to regain control over himself. He turned on the tap and splashed cold water on his face and some on the scratches on his neck. He looked round for a towel but couldn’t see any, so he made his way out of the bathroom. He was going to head back into the bedroom and lie down for a little bit longer but he looked over the balcony of his new property and saw the splendid looking living room that they had sat in last night. He wanted to go and have a look round and see what else the house had to offer. He wondered if he would give up his little place in Newtown and come and live here on a permanent basis. He didn’t really know and he couldn’t know until he had got to know the place a little better. He went to the top of the stairs and his eyes fell upon the light switch panel on the wall. Next to it there was another switch and out of curiosity he flicked it upwards. There was a loud clanking from above him which made him almost jump out of his skin. The metal shutters covering the roof began to roll back. Fresh sunlight began to spill into the room which hurt his eyes at first. The shutters kept on going revealing an almost fully glass roof. Then Patrick saw that they had also revealed that the glass went a third of the way down the living room wall. The shutters retracted fully and the clanking stopped. The view from the balcony was now one of the most amazing things that he had ever seen. The green hills rolled away into the distance and he could see the sun glinting off the water of Layton reservoir. That view scored Layton House a point in his living arrangement decision, no doubt about it. But, there were plenty of other criteria to be assessed. He padded slowly down the stairs, enjoying the warmth of the morning sun smiling down on him. He stood in the living room for a moment wondering what he was going to do next. He decided to just keep on walking around and trying to see as much of the house as he could in one fell swoop. He walked towards the back end of the living room where there were a set of double doors. He turned the handles and pushed them open. He was now inside the biggest kitchen he had ever seen in his life. There was a large island in the middle of the floor that looked like it had hardly been used. The cooker looked like it had come from an industrial kitchen as did most of the units in there. Right in the middle of one if the counters, amongst all this splendour, was a small brown kettle with a cheap looking flower painted on the side of it. Right next to it was a matching teapot. Patrick felt his mouth suddenly go dry.
“Now we are talking, a good cup of tea,” he said to himself.
“That sounds like a plan,” said Jenny from behind him. He turned around and saw with delight that she was wearing his shirt from last night. He could make out the shape of her breasts through the thin cotton and it got his motor running.
“Sorry about your neck, I got a little carried away,” she said.
Patrick’s hand went up to the scratches. He had put them to the back of his mind and now she had mentioned it he felt relief washing through him. Of course Jenny had done it. Although, he couldn’t really remember her doing it.
He walked over to her, put his arms around her and pulled her in close. She began to kiss him and run her hands all over his bare back.
“Take me to that island,” she said between kisses, “I want to show you something.”
He grabbed her legs and lifted her. She sighed when their crotches came into contact with each other and she felt how hard he was. He carried her to the island and sat her down on it.
“Now then little Miss, what did you want to show me?”
She grinned and then bit the corner of her lower lip. Her hand went down and lifted the cotton shirt up. She had nothing on underneath.
“Oh, I see. Well, I had better do something about that hadn’t I.” He said pulling his zipper down.
15.
D.C.I. Henry Slater had a headache. He always knew that when he woke up in the morning with a headache that it was going to be a long hard day. There was no mercy in heaven or on earth for a man with a headache, especially when it came to D.C.I. Henry Slater. He had been sat on his desk, determined that today was the day when he was finally going to catch up with all his report writing. If there was no report writing to be done from this day forwards until he rolled over and turned blue, he would be able to live out the rest of his life in happiness and comfort and with a renewed energy for his job. He supposed a day at his desk wasn’t such a bad thing. At least he could sit and drink cup after cup of coffee and remain fully caffeinated until he went home. He was going to combine the coffee with a steady supply of pain killers to keep the thumping headache at bay. Everything could have been fine and dandy had his phone not rung ten minutes after he had sat down ready for the day’s task. A body had been found, one of their own. It was Bob Denton. Slater had never really cared for Denton.
He found his approach and attitude to be cold at best. He assumed that because he was an older generation that his demeanour had just been his way of keeping an emotional distance from the job. He personally didn’t like it. He thought that a bit of a sense of humour went with the territory when you were investigating some of the worst that humanity had to offer. It certainly got him through the day and he knew that it helped a lot of his co-workers get through it too. So, his day was ruined by Denton popping off and now he had to go and have a look.
He had taken the first of his painkillers on the way to Denton’s house, washing them down with a can of coke instead of his much anticipated coffee fix. Coke was a poor substitute, but it would have to do for now. When he had arrived, uniform were already at the scene, standing outside of the door looking as important as they possibly could. He parked his car and heaved himself out before making his way over to the police officers. He introduced himself and then he was shown inside the house. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and clapped it to his nose. The smell inside the house was appalling, and it wasn’t just from the body that was sitting on the couch, the place hadn’t been cleaned for weeks. The remains of Bob Denton were the worst that Slater had seen in quite some time. The place was drenched with the man’s blood and his head was sitting in his lap amongst a rancid pile of human organs.
“Anybody call forensics in yet?” he said to the two officers, they both shook their heads.
“Right, call them in and get some yellow tape round the perimeter. This is a murder scene folks.”
“Yes sir,” said the two officers, almost in unison.
Slater went to looking at the body again, wondering what kind of an animal would kill someone in such a barbaric fashion. He wasn’t a fan of Denton but he couldn’t ever justify the man being killed, especially not in this way. He wanted to go and look round the rest of Denton’s house. He knew that he had a wife and that his belief was that a woman’s place was in the kitchen. It was old fashioned and somewhat ridiculous in this day and age and certainly not the way that he treated Laura, his own wife. She would have kicked his ball sack if he had even suggested such a thing. But Denton’s attitude towards his other half made him curious about why the place was such a mess. It didn’t look as if any house work had been done in the place for many weeks. Perhaps she had finally left him. Perhaps she had finally got pissed off with his overbearing attitude and walked out on him. But it didn’t fit. Mary wouldn’t have ever left him. On the few occasions that he had seen them both together she had doted on him. She was more than happy to run round after him and get his dinner on the table. She didn’t work, so looking after him was her surrogate career. Denton wasn’t a womaniser by any means, so he couldn’t have been cheating on her. He could only cope with one woman in his life and that had been Mary. But where was she now? She never went off anywhere without him as far as he knew. Could she actually be missing?
Or have been taken.
He patted his pockets, looking for his radio but he realised that he had left it in his car. He needed to get on the horn and put out a search for Mary Denton. If she wasn’t already dead, then her life was in danger. She needed to be found quickly. He turned to leave the room and that’s when he saw the message written on the wall in Denton’s own blood.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered and he fished his phone out of his pocket and took a snap with the camera. There was a name written in the message, a name that he had heard before. He couldn’t quite grasp where the name had come from but he knew that it would eventually resurface in his mind at some point. He pocketed his phone again and headed for the front door. He needed some air. The stench was beginning to become overpowering and it was neutralising the calming effect of his painkillers.
One of the police officers turned when they heard him coming.
“Forensics are on their way sir,” he said.
“Good. Get that yellow tape up. I’m going to get my radio from my car. What’s your name officer?”
“Blythe sir.”
“O.K. Blythe, get this area sealed off. Listen, does the name Patrick Hurst mean anything to you?”
Blythe thumbed his chin for a moment. “Yes sir, he is that guy that inherited all that money. He was on television and everything. I used to go for a few pints in the Millstone at the weekends, but it had gone quiet the last few months. Looked like it was packed on the telly sir.”
It came flooding back to him now. He had seen the report on the television last night and the name struck a chord with him. His father had been killed in an accident and if his memory served him correctly Denton had been investigating the case. There was a link here somehow, but what that link was, he had no earthly idea. He knew he had to speak to Patrick Hurst pretty quickly.
“Thank you Blythe. Who found him?” he said jerking a thumb back towards the house.
“Next door. She’s a nosy old buzzard. She wondered why his living room bay window was open all night and she went and had a peek in. Nearly gave the old girl a heart attack when she saw what was in there.”
“Where is she now?”
“Oh, she is over at Hemmington general being checked over.”
Slater couldn’t help but smile, “Well, I hope she pulls through. Give dispatch a shout when she is all better and we can take a statement from her.”
“Already did it sir. They got one from her whilst she was in the cubicle waiting to be seen.”
Slater nodded. “Good work Blythe. When forensics get here I will go get us some coffee and doughnuts.”
Blythe’s face brightened, “Oh nice one sir, thanks.”
“No worries.”
“Sir?”
“Yes Blythe?”
“Any idea why anyone would want to off Denton sir? I know he was a bit of an old buzzard but surely he wasn’t bad enough to be murdered was he?”
“I don’t know yet Blythe. He never struck me as the kind of guy that people would want to kill. I guess we will find out eventually.”
“Very good sir,” said Blythe.
Slater nodded at him and began to make his way to his car. The other officer walked past him carrying a roll of yellow tape. He tipped his hat towards Slater and Slater saluted him back. He opened the car door and got in. His radio was tucked away in the glove compartment. He clicked it on and paused for a moment. There was something creeping around in the back of his mind and he was sure it was linked with Denton’s murder. He began to suspect that something very dark was descending on Newtown and that it had been knocking around here for a while.
“Well, whoever you are, I’m gonna get you, you murdering fuck,” he said to his reflection in the rear view mirror.
He pressed the button on his radio and began to talk.
16.
The kitchen island was almost too tall for them, but it was good enough to get the job done. The strange angle had allowed him to make Jenny come pretty hard. She had dug her nails into his shoulder and left a new set of scratches that, mercifully, looked exactly like the ones on his neck. Her thighs had twitched and shaken uncontrollably which had triggered his own orgasm which felt like it was never going to end. There was a definite physical chemistry between them there was no doubt about that. He could just imagine spending all day in bed with her and never getting bored of it and that was a feeling he didn’t remember ever having with any other girl he had been with before. There was a passion bubbling within him there was no doubt about it. He hoped upon hope that it wasn’t to do with the new found wealth that he was feeling this way, he didn’t know for sure, it was too early to tell.
Jenny was jumping down off the counter. Patrick helped her down by holding her hips and taking her weight. Just the feel of those hips and her smooth skin made him excitable all over again. But it would have to wait. The furious sex had roused hunger inside him and that need for his morning cup of tea.
“Christ almighty Patrick, I have never done it quite like that before,” said Jenny adjusting her shirt to cover hers
elf up again.
“Me neither, it was amazing,” he said.
“Yeah it was,” she said and put her arms around the back of his neck. “You’re very good in bed mister,” she whispered in his ear.
He felt a little sneaking pride. That was the first time a girl had ever said that to him. Perhaps it was going to be a day of firsts all round.
“I don’t know about you, but I could eat a horse,” he said.
“Mmm, yes. I fancy a full English,” she said which scored her more points. Patrick hated girls that didn’t eat properly, he felt there was something very unnatural about it.
“Right, I can look at what there is in this kitchen, or we can go out and get food.”
“Oooh, let’s eat out. Who can be bothered cooking on a day like this.”
“O.K. take out it is, we had better go and get ourselves dressed. I will give Jack a nudge, see if those two want anything.”
She kissed him slowly and then turned to go out of the kitchen. Patrick went to follow her and they both paused for a moment. They had both laid eyes on a door that led from the kitchen to the left. Neither of them had seen it because it was partially hidden by the doors that led into the room. They exchanged a glance and Patrick shrugged and walked over to the mystery door. He tried the handle but it was locked. He noticed a small box attached to the wall that looked out of place. Curious, he began to fiddle with it and it suddenly popped open. It was hinged at the bottom and he let it drop down. There was a small keypad underneath it and a red light just above it.
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