Psychosis_When a Dream Turns Deadly

by Roger Bray

  “Ready?” he asked.

  She nodded, sighed, and glanced back at the road, wondering if she would ever see it again as she followed Steve and his pry bar into the shade of the trees.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “It’s a big house,” she said as they squatted at the edge of the tree line looking across cleared land to where the large timber and stone house stood.

  He nodded.

  “You could fit a family of ten in there, you have to wonder why Jim thought that he needed a house this big.”

  The house was two floors high and the three, low-set windows they could see at ground level showed evidence of a large cellar underneath. Good stone work jutted out from the ground and from the angle they were looking, the wall seemed to be about two feet thick, if the surrounding recess of the lower windows was anything to go by.

  “I don’t think that he was thinking of a family when he bought this place, more about seclusion.”

  “What’s that on the other side of the house?” she pointed into the tree line. “It looks like a tunnel.”

  He peered at where she was pointing.

  “It could well be. There are a lot of old mines in this area it may be one of those.”

  “For what? What were they mining?”

  “Gold, silver, mercury. All sorts of things. If there’s money to be made, someone will come along and dig a hole.”

  They stayed where they were for a few more minutes as Steve scanned around looking for any activity. There was nothing. Apart from the normal sounds they would expect from woodland, there was nothing to hear. Finally, he made his mind up.

  “OK, let’s go and commit a felony.”

  “What?”

  “Break in.”

  “Oh, and if there’s nothing to find? Jim will know for sure that somebody has been here.”

  “Put your gloves on and touch nothing with bare hands. I can almost guarantee though that even if we find nothing, we will never hear anything from Jim about his house in the wilderness being broken into.”

  “He won’t report it?”

  “I doubt he will. He’s hiding something here, we have to find out what it is.”

  They walked out from the tree line and after the cover they provided, Alice felt exposed as they walked across the clearing. They approached the house from the western gable end which had no doors, working counter clockwise they moved around the house until they had returned to where they had started.

  There were three doors in to the ground floor and a set of steps that went down to a cellar door. That door looked like the strongest of all of them, so Steve decided to try one of the others first. The main front door was solid. Double and made of thick oak. One side was bolted in place as it didn’t move when he leaned on it, the other half rattled a bit but looking at the outside of the dead bolt he didn’t think it would be an easy task to force the door.

  The back door onto the patio area was a long tri-fold door and Steve knew that these particular doors had security bolts built in along each edge. Short of chucking his pry bar through the sheet of glass, he wasn’t getting in easily there either. The third door showed more promise. It was a utility door which probably led straight from the kitchen to where the garbage was collected. As he leaned against the door, the top and bottom gave a little, showing that there were no bolts holding them in place. The only thing securing the door was a normal keyed lock, set into the door knob. He knew from experience that this style of lock was rubbish.

  If a piece of the door knob sticks out, you can knock it off. And if you can do that, you can defeat the lock.

  Steve leaned into the door and set the edge of the pry bar into the gap that he had created. He slid the bar down and forced the edge in further until it was past the return. Pushing a little harder and forcing the pry bar outwards he popped the latch from the strike plate and the door opened easily. The damage was minimal, and he was fairly sure they could close the door again without anyone knowing they had been there. Looking at the back of the door, Steve saw the heavy bolts that Jim had forgotten to set before he’d last left.

  Alice followed him in giving him a thumbs up, and a nodding smile to show she was impressed with his house breaking skills.

  “Now what?” she whispered.

  “I don’t think Jim can hear us, Alice.” Steve laughed.

  “I know,” she said a little more loudly, “but we have broken into someone’s house and whispering seems like the right thing to do.”

  He leaned across and kissed her.

  “And I don’t think making out is right either.”

  He laughed again, “You’re right. Let’s start upstairs and check out the bedrooms first and then work our way down.”

  She followed him up the large staircase and they took a room each, which took them no time. Both the rooms were empty. Completely empty. No furniture, no boxes. Drapes were hung over the windows and were half drawn. That was all. The other three bedrooms on the first floor were the same. They weren’t lived in. The walk-in wardrobes of the rooms were also empty, they didn’t even have a couple of stray coat hangers. The bathrooms were also empty.

  Thirty minutes later, including the time that Steve had spent checking the attic, they were back downstairs. They found the kitchen, and that looked normal. There wasn’t much food in, but the fridge had a few things that looked fresh and the freezer contained a selection of TV dinners and foods that could be quickly defrosted and prepared.

  “You certainly couldn’t call Jim a food snob,” Alice said as she closed the pantry door on the few tins that were in there.

  Steve walked through into the dining room and found where Jim had been living.

  There was a camp stretcher in one corner with a sleeping bag neatly folded up on the top. An old wooden table stood against one wall with two chairs. One was tucked underneath while the other doubled as a book case, piled up with magazines like the ones he had found in Jim’s study. And about the same date range if the cover of the top one was anything to go by.

  “He is camping then,” Alice said.

  Steve nodded, “He’s not doing it outdoors. Why on Earth would someone choose to live like this in the huge house?”

  The rest of the ground floor was as empty as the upstairs except for the bathroom and laundry which showed that Jim confined himself to a small area of the house.

  Steve looked around again, walking through the rooms twice and seeing nothing to comment on. It was all quite sad.

  He came into the kitchen for the third time and stood in front of the door he had ignored the first two times in there. Solid oak, like the cellar door on the outside, he hoped that it wasn’t locked as he would have a hard time getting it open with the pry bar as it had an old fashioned separate handle with a key hole behind it. Steve tried the handle, and it turned easily, pushing on the door it opened inwards onto a short corridor which led to a flight of stairs, disappearing down into darkness.

  Looking around, Steve found the light switch to his right and flicked it on. The top of the stairs was illuminated, and he was about to walk down them when he remembered Alice.

  He walked back through the house until he found her poking around in a cupboard in the laundry. He touched her back, and she jumped, spinning around and swearing at him.

  “Bloody hell, Steve. Do not sneak up on me. I nearly had a heart attack.”

  He laughed in spite of her anger.

  “Sorry. You keep doing what you’re doing, I’m going down the cellar.”

  “Good call. I’m scared enough up here.”

  He kissed her again and turned, walking back to the kitchen and the cellar door.

  The stairs down to the cellar were wide, solid, and well built. They doglegged to the left as they turned the corner and continued down to the cellar floor. Steve could see that there were lights on down there as well, probably four or five controlled from the same switch that he used.

  He went down and could see that the cellar was huge. It was
probably about twelve feet tall and ran the full length and width of the house above. A big dividing wall had been built down the center of the room. It had been well built with concrete blocks and when he thumped on one of them with the side of his fist, he felt that they had been reinforced and filled in with more concrete.

  At first, he wondered if the house wasn’t as old as he had thought but the deeds said it had been built in the 30s and he was sure that they would have used stone for any foundations. He took a couple of steps back up the staircase to confirm what he thought. The concrete block wall didn’t make it all the way up and there was a gap of about four inches between the top of it and the bottom of the floor above. He also saw that it wasn’t a wall in isolation but one side of a box.

  Steve scratched his head and went back to the cellar floor. He followed the wall to its end and turned to see a longer wall stretch along the length of the cellar. Two thirds of the way along he saw a door. Not an average type of door. He’d seen this type before when he had done a six-month stint as a guard in a military prison, after he had joined the military police. This wasn’t a room, it was a cell.

  Steve thought about pulling out his gun but decided the pry bar he still carried would be sufficient if needed. He stood in front of the door. Solidly built from steel, with a metal sliding hatch in the center. Around the edges of the hatch, he could see a light a lot brighter than the lights in the cellar and at first thought it was daylight, until he realized that the new walls didn’t touch the external walls.

  The door was secured with a large bolt which he grasped. Well-oiled, it slipped back easily, and he pushed the door open and, for a heavy door it swung easily on its hinges. The brighter light blinded him for a moment and he blinked a couple of times as he took a step into the room. The first thing that he saw was a bed off to his left and a terrified looking woman scrabbling around on it for something. He thought she was going for a weapon and he started to raise his pry bar to defend himself. She found what she was looking for. A mask.

  Hazel hurriedly pulled the mask across her face all the time screaming, “No, it’s not fair. No, it’s not fair. You’re supposed to give me a warning. It’s not fair!”

  Steve lowered the pry bar as the woman fastened the mask over her face using the Velcro straps. He looked around the room. She was alone.

  He leaned his pry bar on the floor and took a step forward and touched her on the shoulder with his hand.

  She stiffened, and he could see that she was shaking.

  “It’s all right, it’s OK,” was all he could think of saying.

  “I saw you, it’s not OK!” she was crying now.

  Steve knew that to try to keep talking to her would only make things worse so without saying anymore, he turned toward the door and shouted Alice as loud as he could, hoping she would hear him.

  Hazel was still standing where Steve had left her. She was still shaking and muttering. Tears were running down her cheeks despite the mask covering her eyes. The one thing that identified her was her long auburn hair hanging down from under the mask.

  “Alice!” he shouted again.

  “She’s here, now please step out of the room,” Jim said.

  Steve turned as he stepped out of the cell. Alice stood about six feet from the door with Jim holding the hair at the back of her head in a tight grip. He had the barrel of the Beretta pressed hard into Alice’s neck, in the pressure point at the back of the jaw, behind the ear. Alice looked terrified and Steve reached his right hand toward the zipper on the front of his jacket.

  “Don’t,” Jim spat the word out. “I would hate for anything to make me shoot.” He pushed the barrel harder into Alice’s neck and she grimaced as he did.

  “Why did you have to come here? Why did you have to meddle?”

  Jim didn’t expect an answer and didn’t really care. As he looked at Steve, his eyes were soulless, empty, and unemotional. It wasn’t that he didn’t care, he didn’t care about them. This didn’t change his plans, it would make it a bit messy and extra work for him, but in the end nothing would change. This would bring his timetable forward a few days. Now, he would just need to get Alice in the room with Hazel and lock the door and deal with this annoying PI. It was supposed to be in six days’ time; that was the date he had chosen again. It always was, the same date when his dreams would fall apart again. When reality would try to creep into his fantasy.

  The anniversary of Linda’s death. He knew that he had a busy week in front of him to get the job done and clean out the room, like he had done three times before. More so this time. The clothes he would sort, wash the ones that could be reused and destroy the rest along with anything that could be linked to Hazel. The way he looked at it was like a renewal. Out with the old and get ready for the new.

  He always knew that this one was going to be a bit harder. He had liked her, had liked her company even if she had never realized it was him. She reminded him more of Linda than the others. Her body and her smell were like an elixir to him. The way she stood and tilted her head were the same. Smelling her hair, he could imagine the good times before the cancer. Only the second one, Maisie, had come close before. There was something about her as well. Maybe it had been her height, or her figure. Whatever it was, she had been the closest, until Hazel.

  Like the others, he would do it kindly, using the chloroform to knock them out when they least expected it. He would have to separate them and do it one at a time. Strip them down and slip the rope around their necks, pulling it tightly until he knew they were gone. He wasn’t a monster, he couldn’t stand the idea of someone suffering. He was kind, passing them over gently and while they slept, not knowing it was to be for the last time.

  Linda hadn’t had the same option, she hadn’t had someone to help her out of love for her. She had died in wretched pain with the racking coughs making the pain worse as each attack took her further from him. Near the end, she had begged him to help her, to take the pain away and let her die peacefully. He couldn’t do it, not while he believed that, by some miracle, she might be saved. Miracles passed them by, and she slipped away from life with tears on her cheeks, pain on her face, and a look of pleading disappointment toward him. He was determined that he would never watch another human being die like that.

  When the breathing stopped, he would hold the rope for a while to be sure, then once it was done, he would place them down the old mine shaft at the back of the property with the others. For a few months, he would promise himself that she was the last, but he knew that in time, there would be another like Hazel.

  There was no way that he could pick who it might be or where they would come from. It would start as it had before with him seeing someone in a shop or walking through town. He would look and stare and for that moment, she would be Linda coming back to him. Not dead but out and he was meeting her. Weeks would go by while he spent time getting to know about her without giving himself away. When the time came, she would join him out in the woods west of Bend and be his guest for a while.

  Jim maneuvered Alice toward the door to push her inside while he covered Steve with his gun. Once the girls were secured again Steve would be easily dealt with and he could spend all the time he needed cleaning up and disposing his naked corpse down the shaft.

  Alice looked pleadingly at Steve who was looking wide eyed at her. He had no doubt how this was going to play out. He guessed what Jim had in mind and there was no way any of them were leaving this cellar alive and he was helpless for fear of watching Alice die.

  Jim had her hair tightly wrapped around his left hand and forced Alice forward when they were close to the door but she guessed what he was trying to do. The fear left her face as she made a fast decision. Do something or die! managed to break through her fugue.

  Instead of fighting against Jim’s hold on her she looked directly at Steve and lunged forward, ignoring the searing pain in the back of her head as clumps of her hair ripped out. To her surprise, Jim relaxed his grip and allowed her
to take a step away from him before he actually pushed her. As she thought she was clear, he clubbed her on the back of the head with the butt of the Beretta and Alice slowly collapsed to the floor.

  “Pick her up,” Jim said, coldly. “Put her on the bed in the room and step back out.”

  Steve hesitated, and Jim pointed the gun down at Alice who was semi-conscious, moaning softly, and lying on the stone floor.

  “Do it,” Jim commanded, aiming the gun more deliberately at Alice’s head. “Now.”

  Jim stepped away from Alice and stood level with the open door.

  Ignored by everyone in the minute or so that this had played out, Hazel had slowly removed the mask from over her head. She didn’t know exactly what was going on, but she recognized Alice and the guy that had come into the room seemed to be with her. Jim, her neighbor, was decidedly not.

  Hazel dropped the mask she was holding onto the floor and a low wail began in the pit of her stomach. Jim was standing level with the door as Hazel’s banshee like scream grew and he turned his head at the noise. The wail turned into a snarl and Hazel rushed forward, arms outstretched with the look of pure hatred on her face. Jim was taken aback at this sudden event but recovered quickly, raised the Beretta, and pointing it at Hazel’s head fired … a millisecond too soon. The bullet clipped Hazel’s ear and thudded in to the wall behind her but it didn’t slow her down at all. Her outstretched hands, like claws, reached out toward Jim’s face and she was determined to do whatever damage she could. He didn’t fire again, instead, he swung his hand holding the gun at her and the butt of the Beretta slammed into her cheek bone, shattering it and knocking her off balance. As Hazel staggered, Jim slammed the gun butt down on her head and pushed her away from him. She fell backward tripping over Alice’s still moaning body.

  It had all happened in a moment, maybe nine seconds from Alice pulling away to Hazel, now falling backward, crashing into the cinder block wall and sliding down it.