They never called him father or dad, only by his first name. They had always been aware that he was the stepfather not the father.
Nicola walked down the short drive that had Colin’s van parked along one side. A van that hadn’t moved in months.
However, she knew he left the house at some stage every few days, and walked the five minutes to Asda to get more beer. Partly, because she had shouted at him over a month ago because he complained there was no beer in the fridge. They hadn’t talked since.
I hope he’s crawled off to bed and not asleep in front of the TV again.
Her normal routine, when she got home – after saying hi to Jasmine and giving her a hug – was to turn the TV off, pick up all his empty cans, and then take out the rubbish.
She just hoped something changed, because she felt like she was losing her mind.
As she inserted the door key and pushed the front door open with her shoulder, she didn’t realize just how much her world was about to change – and not in a good way.
4
The TV was on too loud. The news was blaring throughout the house.
Nicola was instantly on alert. Something wasn’t right. Even if Colin, in a drunken stupor, had turned the TV louder, rather than off, by mistake, Jasmine would have wondered out and turned it off.
There were cans around his reclining chair, with an empty bottle of cheap whisky next to the TV remote.
Nicola went to reach for the remote to turn the TV down, when movement out of the corner of her eye made her spin around.
Colin was slowly walking down the hallway to the front room. He was naked, with his hands and swollen groin covered in blood.
Nicola dropped the plastic bag, and the backpack dropped from her back.
“What have you done?” she shouted, as she ran past him, knocking him over, as she ran to her sister’s bedroom.
Nicola stopped by the open door. The room looked like it had been ransacked. Jasmine’s laptop was on the floor with a broken screen, along with other items that had been tipped off her desk. The bedside lamp was broken, and the rug was rumpled up. One of the curtains was pulled off its rings. It looked like there had been a struggle.
Then Nicola’s eyes zoned in on to the bed. All the sheets were rumpled up, with her sister’s motionless body laid upon her back. Her nightie was pulled up over her shoulders, with a pillow over her face. Her lower body was so pale compared to all the blood around her inner legs and thighs.
She rushed to her side.
“No, no, no...” she muttered over and over, while knelt down next to the bed. She hadn’t touched her sister yet, as if touching her would make it real.
Tears streaked her face, plastering her red hair to her cheeks.
Her hands hovered over Jasmine, unsure where to touch her. Her sister’s body was all bruised, with one leg twisted at an unnatural angle, hanging off the bed.
Nicola tilted back her head and screamed, pouring in all her sadness and pain with every ounce of her soul – a scream full of primeval anger.
Her hand lowered onto her sister’s chest, over her heart. Jasmine was still warm.
Nicola removed the pillow from off her sister’s face.
Jasmine’s eyes were wide open, and bloodshot – all the capillaries had hemorrhaged in her eyeballs when Colin choked her as he raped her.
Nicola brushed some hair off her sisters battered and bruised face.
Then she noticed the bite mark on Jasmine’s small left, barely formed, breast.
“I’m so sorry Jasmine,” Colin screamed over and over from the front room.
Something inside Nicola snapped.
She sprung to her feet, spun around and marched to her own room. Behind her bedroom door, hung from a hook, was her compound bow and arrows.
She hadn’t touched them in months. She didn’t have time to practice anymore. She used to be top in her archery class, and had won four regional, and even one national competition. She was told she had promise and if she continued the way she was going, she would be considered for trials for the British Archery Team.
Nicola pulled down the bow and grabbed a thirty-two-inch fiberglass arrow out of the quiver. Her sister’s blood was on her hands, and as she notched the arrow, by clicking it into the knock, the blood covered the rubber feathers.
With the bow pointed to the carpet, Nicola marched to the front room.
Colin lay upon his back, with his hands over his eyes. He was still shouting at the top of his lungs, “I’m so sorry Jasmine; you look so much like her!”
He must have sensed someone was close. He removed his hands from his face and struggled to raise himself up onto his elbows.
Through drunk, bloodshot, tear streaked eyes, he said, “I’m so sorry.”
Nicola stood over him, looking down at the man who had raped and killed her twelve-year-old sister. Without a word, she raised the bow. Her chest expanded as she pulled back the string with all her strength, then sighted down the peep-sight. Then, without so much as a facial twitch, she released the pressure.
The arrow slammed into Colin’s face, punching straight through his right eye, jolting his head back with a thump, pinning him to the wooden TV cabinet.
As Colin lay twitching, Nicola calmly placed the bow on his chair.
On the TV, the BBC reported a serious outbreak of a virus in South Africa, which had closed down the airport and a three-mile area around the airport terminal.
Nicola ignored the news and grabbed the remote and switch the TV off. Then, like a robot on autopilot, she headed to the kitchen.
5
Nicola filled a bowl of warm soapy water and headed back to her sister’s bedroom. With a flannel, she slowly cleaned the blood from her sisters cooling body as she quietly sung a nursery rhyme that their mother used to sing to them both to get them to fall asleep.
“The sun is not a-bed, when I at night upon my pillow lie; still around the earth his way he takes, and morning-after morning makes.”
She then slowly lowered Jasmine onto the floor, and changed the bed sheets. After putting a clean nightie on her, she placed her back in bed.
“While here at home, in shining day, we round the sunny garden play; each little Indian sleepy-head is being kissed and put to bed.”
Nicola leaned forward and kissed Jasmine on the forehead.
With her eyes closed, with clean sheets tucked up around her, her sister looked like she was simply sleeping.
“I love you Jasmine, and always will. Say hi to mum for me.”
Nicola left the room and closed the door slowly behind her.
Back in her own room she grabbed a cloth bag from under her bed and tossed some clothes in from some drawers, and an old sleeping bag from the bottom of the wardrobe along with a small two-man tent she used only once to go camping with friends. She knelt and unplugged her phone charger, which she also tossed in along with her iPod.
In the kitchen, she grabbed some food from the cupboards and three large two-liter bottles of water.
Nicola rested the green cloth bag next to Colin’s body while she slid the compound bow into a cloth carry case. She retrieved the arrows and put them in the side pocket.
Under the sink in the kitchen, there was a large metal torch. She placed it in the bag along with some spare batteries.
After taking her purse out of her workbag, and collecting the grocery money from a tin on the bookshelf, Nicola picked up the house phone and dialed nine-nine-nine.
“Which emergency service please?” a female voice asked.
Nicola ignored the operator and placed the receiver on the table. Once no one replied a police car would be dispatched to the residence, to see what the problem was.
Without a backward glance, she left the house, leaving her keys in the door, so the police could get in.
She was moving as if in a dream – everything felt like a nightmare. She couldn’t face anyone. She couldn’t face up to what she did to Colin – not yet. She needed time to gr
ieve and sort her mind out.
Nicola headed back up the road toward a small lane that entered Baker’s Park woods. She would hide in there for a few days until she gave herself in. She knew where there was an abandoned stone hut, that they both used to play in years ago.
6
Sunday 16th December 2012
Day 2
Nicola lay inside the tent that was erected inside the stone hut. The floor of the hut was soil, so she could still peg the tent down.
Even with the torch, the walk through the woods the night before was difficult. Darkness changes everything. The relaxing woods, with overhanging trees and a babbling river, becomes a creepy, alien world. And away from the streetlights and light pollution, without the torch she would be plunged into absolute darkness.
Putting the tent up was a bit of a challenge, but she found her mind was numb from shock, and she put it up without putting any thought into it. She then crawled into the sleeping bag in her clothes and lay looking at the inside of the tent’s ceiling.
Nicola lay awake for hours. She turned the torch off to save the batteries. It was so dark it was almost as if her eyes were closed.
After her body relaxed into the sleeping bag, everything suddenly caught up with her – a barrage of emotions engulfed her stricken soul. Then she started crying; her body shook with heavy sobs, as tears wet her face and hair, and soaked into her sleeping bag.
She didn’t know what time she eventually fell asleep because she had turned her phone off, and she didn’t have a watch on, and at that moment, time meant nothing to her – nothing did. All she could feel was a deep, gut churning emotional pain that engulfed her whole being.
All Sunday she spent curled up inside the tent. She only got out to go toilet just outside the hut. She drank a little water but couldn’t stomach any food.
Thoughts kept churning around in her mind. It was worse than losing her mother, at least she still had Jasmine; now she had no one, and she was a murderer – even though the raping bastard deserved it. However, she didn’t think the authorities would see it that way.
By nightfall her head was pounding. She had hardly sipped any water, and with the amount she was crying, she was severely dehydrated.
Before she fell into a fitful sleep, she downed as much water as her stomach could handle.
She woke several times feeling like there was someone else present. But there was just the sound of the wind rustling the trees, and small animals foraging in the undergrowth.
Each time she woke, she cried herself back to sleep.
Her dream was twisted and horrifying. She was walking around the house, naked, dripping in blood, and the floor was covered in congealing blood that she had to wade through. Large pulsating clots hung from the ceiling like stalactites, and it drenched the curtains and furniture. She could hear Jasmine screaming from other rooms, but as she tried to run her feet would slip on the blood, and she would land heavy, sliding along into furniture. And when she did manage to get to a room where the voice sounded like it was originating, the room was empty. However, what each room did have was a blood-soaked bed.
Nicola tossed and turned in the sleeping bag, kicking and punching in the nightmare. If anyone were around, so deep in the woods, so late at night, they would have heard the animalistic screams of pure anguish echo throughout the darkness.
7
Monday 17th December 2012
Day 3
The next morning, Nicola felt like she had run a marathon in her sleep. Her body ached, and her head was pounding.
She slowly crawled out of the damp sleeping bag. She sat with the tent door open, letting the cool morning air circulate, to take the smell of sweat out of the plastic.
Her throat was sore; her hair was knotted and her clothes rumpled and sweaty, but she didn’t care. Her mind was blank – exhausted from crying and shouting in her sleep.
She looked down at her palms. They had bled in the night, where her nails dug into her pale flesh, from where she had clenched her fists. Also, on her sleeves was Jasmine’s blood, all dried and dark – a reminder of her loss.
Nicola intended to get up and have something to drink and maybe nibble on some food. Instead, she sat hunched in the entrance to the tent, crying. Loud sobs pierced the morning air. She wanted to take the top off and toss it away from herself; instead, she rolled onto one side, on her back, pulled the sleeping bag up over herself and fell back into a fitful sleep.
She woke again around midday. It was cold and misty outside the hut.
The stone hut was situated deep in the woods, way off the beaten tracks used by dog walkers, joggers, and ramblers. She had found it along with Jasmine years ago, when they went exploring.
Jasmine liked to become famous people for the day, while reenacting what she was learning at school. On that warm summer’s day, they were pretending to be Lewis and Clark, and the woods were the unexplored American wilderness. As they stumbled through the thick undergrowth, Jasmine explained that the woods around them were the uncharted land of the Continental Divide, and that they had to find a safe passage to the Pacific coast.
The hut they found was about fifteen feet by eight, with one empty window frame, where the wood and glass had long gone – even the door was missing. The roof bowed in the middle, and vines stopped two of the walls from collapsing. However, it gave protection from the elements, and the cold.
Nicola unsteadily got to her shaking feet.
When she looked over into the far corner, she could picture Jasmine crouched down, taking a soil sample, and putting it in one of mum’s small Tupperware containers. Jasmine stated they would analyze the soil and determine who had lived in the hut.
She stood leaning on the warped doorframe, with her mind drifting back to the present.
Outside it was misty. The white shroud covered everything, as if hiding her from the world.
No birds sang. No dogs barked in the distance. It was eerily quiet. It was if the world was holding its breath.
Nicola went toilet again, and drank some more water. Her throat ached.
She took a bite out of a snicker’s bar, and after a few chews she spat it out. She couldn’t stomach food at the moment.
She had no idea what the time was. She didn’t want to turn her phone on, because in the movies they could pinpoint a person’s location from their mobile signal. She didn’t know how accurate that was, but she didn’t want to risk it.
The police would be searching for her by now. Her sister and stepfather were dead, and he had her arrow through his eye socket. It would only take them so long to piece it all together and realize she was missing and to start looking for her.
She was surprised a police helicopter, with its night-vision infrared camera, hadn’t already been buzzing over the woods looking for her.
Nicola went and sat back in the entrance to the tent. Her belongings were spewed around the ground. Discarded while trying to pull out the sleeping bag.
Her head pounded, regardless of how much water she drank. Her eyes were swollen and tender. Every muscle ached as if she had been tense all night, like a coiled spring.
She hunched over, half in, half out of the tent.
Condensation dripped from the tent’s ceiling onto her blue rumpled up sleeping bag.
Nicola couldn’t get the image of her sister’s body out of her mind’s eye. It was almost as if it was burned into the back of her eyelids.
She kept playing things over in her mind.
If only I didn’t work so much. If only I was at home more. If only I realized Colin was so bad. But a rapist – a fucking killer? Who could see that coming?
He raised her for almost ten years. He was quiet and half the time you didn’t even know he was there. “The perfect husband,” her mother used to say. He worked hard and provided for the whole family – uncomplaining.
When he wasn’t working he sat quietly at the kitchen table reading newspapers, or watching TV with the rest of the family. She had never hear
d him raise his voice or argue with her mother.
She spent years going to work with him on Saturdays, to get her out of the house and earn a few pounds for pocket money. She had watched him work, while explaining what he was doing. She used to sit and watch him repair things in the garage that was converted into his workspace. She got to the point where she could repair some of the electrical items for him.
Colin had been like a large, quiet lamb.
Nicola cried some more. She rubbed an arm up over her face, smearing snot and tears into her tangled red hair.
He couldn’t have done it. I was tired. I heard him wrong. I killed the wrong man. I killed the man who stepped in to raise us.
She sat unmoving, with her arms placid at her sides. Her mind spinning, running everything over and over, and each time it all came out distorted.
Nicola was cold.
Looking up from her lap, she realized the night had drawn in. It was dark outside the stone hut, with silvery moonlight reflecting off overhanging branches. The mist that surrounded the hut glowed with an eerie, mystical light – making the ground and trees seem to glow. There was no wind; everything was perfectly still and silent, as if she had been transported into another world.
Nicola dropped back into the tent and rolled onto one side. She tried to fumble with the door zip, but gave up halfway. She was freezing during the night, but couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it.
She cried throughout the frosty night. The tears cooled her face even more. She didn’t even have the strength to wipe them a way.
The first stage of grief – Denial and Isolation – was almost over. The next stage – Anger, was about to consume her every thought.
8
Tuesday 18th December 2012
The Sixth Extinction & The First Three Weeks & The Squads First Three Weeks Omnibus [Books 1-10] Page 31
