Compulsion

by Shaun Hutson

  The metallic clang reverberated in the air with each impact.

  “So where are they?” Mackenzie wanted to know.

  “Where are what?” Tina enquired.

  “The rats.” Mackenzie grinned.

  “Carl said there were rats up here.”

  “Some as big as dogs, they reckon,” Thompson elaborated.

  Tina shuddered.

  “Well, why are we hanging around here if there are fucking rats here?” she said, looking nervously around.

  Thompson raised the air rifle and grinned.

  “Will that kill them, Carl?” Harper asked.

  Thompson nodded.

  “A .177 or a fucking BB just bounces off them,” he said.

  “But this’ll do the job.”

  “You’re going to shoot rats?” Tina grunted wearily.

  “No.” Mackenzie sniggered.

  “We’re going to shoot you.”

  He pressed one index finger to her face and shouted, “Bang!”

  “Fuck off,” she rasped, striking at him, but missing.

  “There are nests up here,” Thompson continued, swinging the rifle up to his shoulder and squinting along the sight.

  He squeezed the trigger.

  There was a loud crack and the pellet slammed into one of the garage doors. It blasted away some peeling paint and left a dent large enough to get the end of a little finger into.

  Mackenzie and Harper scurried across to the door and inspected the damage.

  Thompson took another pellet from his pocket and reloaded.

  He raised the rifle once again and fired.

  The pellet missed Harper’s head by inches.

  It smacked into the metal door of the garage and dropped to the ground.

  Mackenzie stooped and retrieved the flattened piece of lead.

  “Fucking watch it, Carl,” Harper shouted, his heart thudding a little faster as he saw Thompson push another of the pointed pellets into the weapon.

  “You could have hit me. Cunt.” He whispered the last word under his breath.

  Tina laughed loudly.

  “Let me have a go,” she said, reaching for the rifle.

  “Fuck off,” Thompson said, flatly.

  “You would fucking shoot him.”

  “It wouldn’t kill him, would it?”

  “If you hit him in the eye. Or from any closer you could.”

  Mackenzie and Harper hurried back to join Thompson and Tina. Harper picked up a piece of wood and began banging the garage doors.

  “The noise might drive them out,” he said.

  “We need some food or something,” Mackenzie insisted.

  “Like bait.”

  He dug in the pocket of his jacket and found a half-eaten bag of crisps. Some of these he scattered on the floor.

  Tina laughed.

  “We’ll go into the garages,” Thompson announced.

  “Hunt the fuckers down.”

  Tina looked apprehensively at him.

  “I’m not going in there if there are rats inside,” she said, her voice wavering.

  “Then go home,” Thompson told her.

  He drove his booted foot at the lock on the closest of the metal doors and shattered it with ease, then dug his hand under the door and pulled.

  There was a loud screech and the garage yawned open like a huge mouth.

  Thompson looked at the others.

  “Come on,” he said flatly.

  RONNI KNOCKED LIGHTLY on the door and waited.

  No answer.

  She knocked again.

  When there was no answer the third time she let herself in.

  Janice Holland was sitting on the edge of the bed clutching at her chest with one hand.

  “Janice,” Ronni murmured and crossed to the older woman, sliding one comforting arm around her shoulder.

  “I’m all right, love,” Janice said, her face pale and sheathed in perspiration.

  “Just a twinge.” She attempted a smile.

  “Do you want me to get Harry?”

  “No, don’t worry him. He fusses too much as it is.” She tried to swallow, then pointed a shaking finger in the direction of the bedside table.

  “Could you fetch me one of my tablets, please?” Janice asked.

  Ronni retrieved the glycerine and watched as the older woman took one, popping it beneath her tongue.

  Ronni then crossed to the small sink and spun the cold tap, filling a beaker with water. She passed it to Janice, who sipped gratefully at it.

  “Don’t tell Harry,” she said softly.

  “He’s got enough on his mind.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want me to get the doctor?” Ronni persisted.

  Janice shook her head.

  “No fuss,” she said.

  “I’m fine now. As fit as a butcher’s dog, as we say in Yorkshire.”

  This time she smiled broadly.

  Ronni sat down next to her once again and held her hand.

  “What happened?” she wanted to know.

  “I just came back from the day room to fetch my glasses. When I got here I felt a little faint.”

  “You should have pressed the alarm button. One of us would have come straight away.”

  “No need to fuss.”

  “It’s not fussing, Janice. It’s what we’re here for.”

  Janice squeezed her hand tightly.

  “Do you want to lay down for a while?” Ronni continued.

  “No, I’m fine now. I suppose I’ve got my mother to thank for this.

  Angina’s hereditary isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know.” Ronni smiled.

  “You’d have to ask an expert.”

  “My father worked in a hospital, you know. Halifax General. He was a porter. I don’t even know if it’s still there now. We used to live about a mile away. I remember the night my mother had the heart attack that killed her. He carried her all the way from our house to the hospital. She was dead before he got there.”

  Ronni felt her hand being squeezed more tightly.

  “My father carrying her and me and my three brothers following like little lost sheep,” Janice continued.

  “I was only nine. The youngest. I can still remember his face when the doctor told him she was dead. I’d never seen him cry before.”

  Ronni listened silently.

  “She was only sixty-three,” said Janice.

  “Younger than I am now.”

  “What happened to the family?”

  “We were sent to live with members of the family. I was sent to my aunt’s in Nottingham. That was where I met Harry.”

  “Do you keep in touch with your family?”

  “No. Two of my brothers died in the war. The other one emigrated to Canada. I’ve just got Harry now.”

  “Well, you make sure you keep him and you look after yourself.

  We can’t have anything happening to you with this anniversary coming up. How many years is it?”

  “Forty-six. All good ones. Harry’s got something planned but he won’t tell me what it is. Do you know, love?”

  “I’ve been sworn to secrecy, Janice.” Ronni chuckled. She studied the older woman’s face for a moment longer, then got to her feet.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked.

  Janice nodded.

  “I’ll just sit for a minute,” she said. Tell Harry I can’t find my glasses if he asks where I am. He worries too much. You know what men are like.”

  Ronni nodded.

  Some of them.

  She slipped quietly from the room.

  “FUCKING HELL, IT stinks in here.” Liam Harper waved his hand in front of his face as if to dispel the cloying stench that enveloped him.

  The inside of the long-deserted garage reeked of damp, neglect and something more pungent.

  Terry Mackenzie kicked at a pile of old newspapers close by, watching as they toppled over.

  Headlines about the Falklands War.

&nb
sp; Margaret Thatcher.

  Pictures of triumphant troops returning home.

  Ancient history to him.

  There were some empty, rusted cans of motor oil. A few tins of paint.

  He kicked those over too, the crash reverberating inside the hollow shell of the garage.

  The floor was several inches deep in dust, the motes swirling through the already rancid air as they were disturbed.

  Thompson walked slowly through the derelict surroundings, scanning the gloom.

  No sign of rats in here.

  “Let’s try another one,” he said and his companions rushed past him.

  He heard them hammering away at the lock of the next garage.

  “This is stupid,” Tina protested as he walked past her, unimpressed by her complaint.

  The second garage yielded a similar harvest of desolation.

  A battered old manual typewriter.

  Some scratched and broken MFI units.

  Even an old cassette player.

  Harper picked it up and threw it against one of the walls, shouting loudly when it shattered.

  Thompson walked to the back of the garage and peered at the rear wall.

  No nests here.

  Or in the third or the fourth garage.

  It took a blow from a half-brick to finally shatter the padlock on the fifth door. Thompson stepped inside.

  The smell was vile; like stale urine, but more cloying.

  Rain water had seeped beneath the door and spread through the layers of dust.

  He saw other marks in the carpet of filth.

  Tiny tracks.

  There was a metal toolbox propped on an old Formica-topped table.

  Mackenzie opened it.

  There were several screwdrivers in it. Two hammers. A Stanley knife with a rusty blade and hundreds of nails of all lengths.

  Mackenzie pocketed the Stanley knife.

  The rust that came off on his fingers looked like dried blood.

  “Look.” Harper chuckled.

  He was pulling at a pile of old pornographic magazines tucked away in

  one corner of the garage. Mackenzie took one from him and the two of

  them flicked quickly through the stiffened pages. Occasionally one of

  them would hold up the cent refold

  Harper rubbed his index finger over the breasts of one of the girls and giggled.

  “This is your mum, isn’t it, Tina?” he called.

  “Fuck off,” she sneered, taking a drag of her cigarette.

  Thompson lifted the air rifle to his shoulder.

  There was movement at the rear of the garage.

  Something small and sleek moved quickly from one corner.

  He saw a tail.

  He fired.

  The pellet smacked into the wall and the rat darted back the way it had come.

  Thompson reloaded and fired again.

  He saw two baleful eyes sparkle in the dull light.

  The eyes vanished.

  “Did you hit it?” Mackenzie wanted to know.

  Thompson shook his head.

  More movement.

  He still had the rifle pressed to his shoulder.

  The rat scurried across his sights and he squeezed the trigger.

  The pellet drilled into its thin body and it squealed, trying to drag itself along on the remains of a back leg that had been blown off at the hip.

  Mackenzie ran to the toolbox and snatched one of the hammers from it.

  He moved close to the rat.

  It opened its mouth defiantly to show its long front teeth.

  He smashed its skull with the hammer.

  “There’s probably more of them around here,” Thompson said, stepping out into the light.

  It was then that he saw the cat.

  A tortoiseshell, it was sitting about twenty feet away watching, apparently unconcerned by the noise and raised voices. Even when Thompson pointed the rifle at it, the creature didn’t move.

  He shot it in the right hind leg.

  The cat hissed and leapt several feet into the air.

  Thompson reloaded with incredible speed and fired again.

  The second pellet hit it in the side, punctured the fur and knocked the wind from the animal.

  It turned to run, but Thompson was after it.

  Mackenzie and Harper joined the chase, Mackenzie hurling the hammer and missing by feet. The tool slammed into one of the garage doors with a deafening clang.

  Thompson saw the cat dragging its injured back leg. Saw the blood.

  He shot it in the other hind leg and it sprawled on the wet ground, scratching at the wounds.

  It was a young animal. Barely a year old. Not very large.

  He picked it up by its collar and looked at it.

  The cat hissed and tried to scratch him.

  Thompson held it at arm’s length as he carried it back towards one of the open garages.

  “Fuck the rats.” He grinned.

  “What are you going to do?” Tina wanted to know, a mixture of curiosity and excitement in her voice.

  “You’ll see,” Thompson told her, his smile spreading.

  THE VINYL SPARKLED as Colin Glazer wiped the soft cloth over it. He turned the record in his hand, careful not to touch the playing surface, then gently lowered it onto the turntable and placed the stylus carefully on the edge.

  As the music filled the room he wandered over to his chair and reached for the book beside his bed. He winced as he felt the familiar gnawings of arthritic pain in his knees and lower back. They receded as he settled himself and flipped open the book.

  He’d read it before, just as he’d read most of the volumes that filled the shelves on three sides of his room. The non-fiction was usually read at least twice. Sometimes even the novels.

  Despite the size of his collection, the subject matter was fairly limited.

  Military history. Crime. True crime.

  There was a well-thumbed paperback copy of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood on the bedside table. He’d managed to pick it up at a car boot sale for lOp, along with some old Raymond Chandler novels and a yellowed copy of a Conan Doyle anthology bearing the legend %’ on the front.

  Dorothy L. Sayers. Dashiell Hammett. Edgar Allan Poe. Ruth Rendell.

  All vied for space on Glazer’s packed shelves.

  Fiction rubbed jackets with books about Charles Manson. The Moors Murderers. The Yorkshire Ripper. Jeffrey Dahmer. Neville Heath.

  Despite the mutterings of some of his fellow residents about his morbid tastes in literature, Glazer found, more often than not, that he had become something of a lending library. Barely a day passed without one of his companions browsing the collection and leaving with a volume of one kind or another.

  Glazer made a mental note to ask Eva Cole what she’d thought of the book she’d borrowed from him about Ruth Ellis. Eva, to Glazer’s fascination, had been visiting friends in Hampstead at the time Ellis had shot and killed her lover in April 1955.

  He looked up as the door opened, smiling when he saw Ronni standing there.

  “I heard the music,” she told him.

  “So I knew you were in here.”

  “I bet you don’t know what it is, do you?” Glazer grinned.

  Ronni shook her head.

  “Bunny Berrigan,” he told her.

  “I Can’t Get Started With You”. Harry Holland asked me if I could play it at his anniversary party. He says it’s one of Janice’s favourites. He picked out a few more he’d like me to play too.”

  “You’re the DJ, are you, Colin?” She smiled.

  “I don’t mind. I’ve always loved music. Listening to it. Dancing to it. Playing it.”

  “You used to be in a band, didn’t you?”

  “In the fifties.”

  “What did you play?”

  “Drums and guitar. I learned the piano, too. I never wanted to do it professionally, but we used to play in pubs at the weekends. They’d give us free beer fo
r the night. The girls used to like us too.” He winked exaggeratedly and Ronni smiled.

  She crossed to the turntable and looked down at the vinyl.

  “It’s a good job you got your record player fixed,” she murmured.

  “Jack had a look at it for me. He’s a bit of a mechanical wizard is our Mr. Fuller.”

  “My dad’s still got some ‘78s at home, but he’s got nothing to play them on,” Ronni mused, looking at the other records beside the turntable.

  “You can’t get stack systems with turntables that play ‘78s anymore.”

  “My grandkids have never even seen a record, let alone a ‘78. It’s all CDs and tapes now, isn’t it? They always laugh at me when they come.” His tone darkened slightly.

  “Not that they come very often.”

  Ronni turned to look at the older man and saw the sadness in his eyes.

  “They hardly know me, Ronni,” he said quietly.

  “I think that’s the way my daughter wants it.”

  “I’m sure it’s not, Colin. I mean, she lives quite a way away, doesn’t she?”

  “She’s got a car. Once a month wouldn’t kill her.”

  Ronni nodded almost imperceptibly.

  “How often do you see your father?” he wanted to know.

  “Every day, but that’s different. He only lives half a mile away.”

  “You still see him.”

  But would I see him so often if mum was still alive.

  “You never know, your daughter might even turn up this weekend,” Ronni offered.

  “I won’t hold my breath,” Glazer said flatly.

  The record came to an end, and the needle stuck in the runoff grooves.

  The constant clicking sounded like a mechanical heartbeat.

  THOMPSON FOUND THAT by holding the cat at arms’ length, he could avoid its claws.

  The injured animal slashed at him every now and then, but a combination of shock and blood loss had reduced it to virtual helplessness.

  He looked at its eyes, bulging in the sockets. Combined with the low mewling sounds it made, Thompson thought it seemed to be begging to be freed.

  Tina lit another cigarette and followed him into the garage, her eyes fixed on the captive feline.

  Harper and Mackenzie also stood close, looking alternately at the cat and Thompson.

  Harper put the toe of his trainer into a puddle of blood that had dripped from the cat’s wounds and smeared the crimson into the thick dust.

  “Just let it go,” Tina said, feigning disinterest.

  Thompson ignored her and reached into the toolbox as he passed. He pulled out the hammer and two rusted nails, each about four inches long.