Shutter House

by Rick Wood

  After all, you know what they say…

  Fourth time’s a charm.

  7

  The doctor’s credentials were proudly displayed upon his office wall: a first-class honours degree in medicine, a master’s degree, his doctorate, and numerous other certificates displaying qualifications Amber didn’t recognise.

  Sparsely placed among these framed certificates were pictures; each featuring a smiling woman with long brown hair and a boy, a little older than a toddler.

  Another picture of the child when he was younger sat proudly on the doctor’s desk.

  Amber closed her eyes and leant her forehead on her palm. She was getting a headache. She wasn’t sure how much more she could take of other people’s happiness.

  The doctor entered and smiled at her, that reassuring smile doctors always have that never gives anything away. He sat in his chair across his desk from her, leaning forward and interlocking his fingers.

  “Amber,” he said. “How are you holding up?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I have worked with many young carers, and I have seen how wearing it can be. Are you taking care of yourself?”

  Amber frowned. What did this have to do with her mum?

  “I’m fine,” she lied.

  “If you would like some support–”

  “I just want to know about my mum.”

  He sighed.

  “I know, Amber, and I will talk to you about your mother in a moment. If I’m being honest, you look tired.”

  Amber considered her response, considered exploring her difficulties, her strenuous life and the pressure she constantly felt pushing down upon her, pushing on her shoulders, as if it was going to push her into the ground, further and further, until the roots took hold of her, pulled her under, and she could breathe no more.

  As it was, she decided not to.

  “I just want to know about my mum,” she repeated.

  “Okay,” the doctor acknowledged with a false smile. He turned to his computer and clicked his mouse a few times.

  She wondered what he was looking at and wished he would just give her the bad news already.

  “I can see by her records that you’ve visited a few other hospitals.”

  “Yes.”

  “And what did they say?”

  She huffed. What did this have to do with anything?

  “They said that they couldn’t do anything.”

  “I see,” he said, continuing to scroll. “And you came here for…”

  He raised his eyebrows, awaiting an answer.

  How was she supposed to complete that sentence?

  False hope?

  Desperation?

  A miracle?

  “Another opinion,” she finally decided.

  “Okay,” the doctor said.

  She was starting to hate the way he said okay. It felt demeaning, as if he was belittling the way she felt, like he was saying okay rather than telling her she was an idiot.

  “Unfortunately,” the doctor finally said, “we don’t have better news for you.”

  Every piece of false hope and spark of optimism drained out of her like the last gurgle of water down a drain.

  “The cancer has spread through her. It’s in her throat, in her lungs, in her arms, possibly even her intestines. I understand she’s had two rounds of chemotherapy already?”

  Slowly, she nodded, faintly and non-committal.

  “It’s pretty aggressive, and I don’t think another round will work. In fact, I’m certain of it.”

  His words melded into the words of every other doctor.

  So matter-of-fact.

  So eagerly honest.

  So patronising.

  Different voice, same verdict.

  She looked again at the photo of the child on his desk and decided that she truly, truly hated him.

  “I would probably say that she had, maybe, three to five months. I think the best thing you can do is make her comfortable.”

  Make her comfortable?

  Had he seen her mum?

  Had he seen what she was like?

  She was constantly moaning, waking up in agony, falling asleep because she couldn’t keep her head up.

  How the hell was she meant to be comfortable?

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t give you any better news.”

  No you’re not.

  You’re not sorry.

  You’re going to go home, have tea with your wife and forget all about us.

  “Thanks,” she grunted. She lifted herself from the chair and trudged toward the door.

  “You really should get some support for yourself,” the doctor said.

  She shut the door behind her.

  She leant her head against the wall and pleaded with herself not to cry.

  Not here.

  Please, not here.

  8

  He sat back in his armchair, newspaper in hand, and gazed upon his masterpiece.

  He was very good at what he did.

  No, more than good.

  He was the Picasso of what he did.

  In fact, she looked like a Picasso painting, her eye too far from the other and her body distorted into a well-worked image of surrealism.

  He took in a deep breath and let it go.

  What a life this was.

  He had it all.

  The money. The house. The car.

  The women.

  The job.

  He was the person other people craved to be. The person that interns would look to and think damn, I wish I could be as successful as him some day.

  But most of all, it was his deep, deep passion for human mutilation and disfigurement that provided him with this wondrous happiness he experienced.

  He stretched his legs out and placed them on her stiff rear end, stuck in the air from glorious rigor mortis, and opened the paper.

  Even more satisfaction filled his thought at the sight of the main article on page 3.

  POLICE PLEAD FOR WITNESSES IN MISSING GIRL CASE

  Sheila Hamsmith, a twenty-one-year-old waitress at the Sunnyside Hotel, disappeared from her place of work at approximately 3.23 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon. The parents of Sheila, who lives with her fiancé, Devon, and her son, Charlie, are said to be increasingly worried for her safety

  “It is just not like her,” Caron Hamsmith, Sheila’s mother, told us. “She’s the most responsible person you would ever know. She would never go somewhere without letting someone know. She is a doting mother and would never abandon her son. The only thing we can think is that she has been taken against her will.”

  Caron went on to plead with any potential abductor. “Please, just talk to Sheila, and you’ll see that she’s a kind, loving woman, who would never hurt anyone.”

  He snorted. Too late for that.

  Police are appealing for witnesses who may have been at the Sunnyside Hotel during the afternoon of the incident.

  When asked if this has anything to do with a recent spate of missing women, the police replied, “We will not be making a comment on this at this time.”

  The whole world was running around like headless chickens, and he was sitting back and enjoying it.

  “So,” he said, “your name is Sheila, is it?”

  He looked at her face, empty and stiff, broken by blood, her features skew-whiff, pointing in directions they should never point, mangled and tangled.

  “Your mother sounds like a drag,” he continued. “Gosh, I’m glad I didn’t have to spend the evening with her.”

  He sighed.

  This conversation was going nowhere.

  It wasn’t like she was going to reply.

  He stood, growing agitated.

  “Well there’s no point me just stood here chatting to myself, huh!”

  He dropped his face right next to hers and looked into the one eye he could.

  “You selfish bitch. All I wanted was a little conversation!”

  Still no response.
>
  In a spurt of wrath, he lifted his axe and hacked at her once more. He chopped into her elbow, removing her forearm, then her knee, kicking her loose shin away.

  He grabbed a knife with a rabid scream and stuck it into the underside of her breast.

  It was so hard. He expected her arm and leg to be tough, but her breast was so hard. Like he was hitting clay or stone.

  He stuck the knife in further and further, twisting and twisting.

  He gave up.

  The knife wasn’t going in. His arms were tired.

  But he wasn’t done yet.

  She was, but he wasn’t.

  He left the room to retrieve his mobile phone from beside his bed where it had been charging. He hit three and waited for speed dial to do its work.

  “Hello, Best Bellas,” came the eager reply of a woman too old for this shit.

  “Hello, is Eve working tonight?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Perfect. I’d like her to meet me at this hotel.”

  He was hot, he was half-full, and his night was only just beginning.

  9

  Amber felt a tinge of sadness, in the way that one does when witnessing a stranger’s misery.

  “She’s the most responsible person you would ever know,” stated Caron Hamsmith on the morning news. “She would never go somewhere without letting someone know. She is a doting mother and would never abandon her son. The only thing we can think is that she has been taken against her will.”

  They showed a picture of the girl. She looked younger than twenty-three. She could easily have been one of her friends. She was also a waitress, although worked in a far classier establishment than Amber.

  “Is there anything you’d like to say to someone who may have taken her?”

  Caron’s eyes focussed on the camera, and Amber could feel them peering into her soul.

  “Please, just talk to Sheila, and you’ll see that she’s a kind, loving woman, who would never hurt anyone.”

  She turned off the television and thoughts of the news report faded, replaced with thoughts of the day ahead.

  She went to the clothes horse in the kitchen and felt her blouse. It was still a little damp, but she’d worn damp clothes many times before. She put it on, did it up, and purposefully didn’t look at her reflection in the window.

  It was still better than what the other girls were made to where.

  She found her way to her mum’s bed, in what used to be the conservatory but had since been changed to a bedroom. A heap of dried sick stained the pillow next to her.

  A glance at the clock told Amber that she was already running late, but she had no choice – she couldn’t leave dried sick there all day.

  She helped her mum to her wheelchair, took her into the living room, and placed her in front of an episode of Eastenders; though the television could be showing any television program and her mum would have no idea. Amber collected the bedsheets and duvet and put them in the washing machine. She put the timer on for the afternoon, kissed her mum on the head, and left for work.

  After another long bus ride she arrived at Syphy’s Strip Club. She nodded the same hello to the same bouncer, forced the same smile at Syphy’s same ill-timed remarks, and left her same bag in the same locker.

  She leant against the till, staring out at the club, trying not to contemplate life but unable to do anything but. Two girls were flaunting what they had, one of them on stage, and one of them in the corner gyrating upon a man who didn’t know how to keep his hands to himself. There were probably five customers in all. Besides the man having a hell of a time with Brandy, there were three young men sat around the stage and an old man sat at the bar nursing a pint of Stella. The old man was in here most days, and she had come to know him as Bill.

  Unlike the others, Bill never had a lap dance and never made crude remarks. He was a regular like a pub would have a regular; probably lonely and left to grow old alone.

  She wondered if she’d ever get to grow old.

  She wondered if her mum…

  She shut her eyes tight. This wasn’t the place.

  Still, she couldn’t help but think: four doctors.

  Four separate hospitals.

  Four opinions that all happened to be the same.

  There was only one hospital left within travelling distance, but it was private. It wasn’t like she could afford it – she had a little left over from savings that she’d been working her way through to support her mum, and there wasn’t much left.

  Then again, it wasn’t like she had much choice.

  Knowing that no one would mind or even notice, she took out her phone and googled: Cotswolds Private Hospital.

  The website alone was impressive. Pictures of smiling doctors and smiling patients, testimonies from those who’d had their lives saved, smiles from those who could afford such a thing.

  It seemed so unfair.

  Why should someone with money be more deserving of survival?

  Bill grunted. That was his signal that he’d like another drink. She took his glass, placed it under the tap, and watched gormlessly as it filled.

  She had little over a thousand left in her savings. She’d originally put it aside from a Saturday job working in a chip shop to pay for university. She’d once had enough to cover living costs until her final year.

  But it didn’t look like that was happening any time soon.

  “There you go,” she said, handing Bill his beer with a forced smile. His distant eyes avoided hers as took the beer, and gulped down at least a fifth of it in one.

  She looked around to see if Syphy was watching.

  The group in front of the stage all had relatively full drinks. They wouldn’t be coming to the bar soon.

  She had time. She found the number and called.

  “Hi,” she said to the receptionist who answered the phone – a woman who already seemed more accommodating than the receptionist from the other day. “I was wanting to know how much it would cost for a consultation… It’s for my mum, she has cancer… Just for a check over…”

  She waited to hear the cost.

  “How much?” she asked, wanting to make sure she heard right.

  Just a consultation: £1,100.

  That was all she had left.

  But what did her mum have left?

  Three to five months, wasn’t it?

  It wasn’t like she’d be needing to support her mum much longer. What good was the money going to be now?

  “Do you have any appointments this evening?”

  They had one at 8.30 p.m. with Doctor William Chesser.

  Even the name sounded rich.

  “I’ll take it,” she told them.

  Her final try.

  Then it occurred to her: but what if they could help her? How could she afford any further treatment they might provide?

  Realising it was unlikely that they could, she decided she’d deal with the issue if she was lucky enough to have to deal with it.

  For now, the appointment was enough.

  Well, it wasn’t enough.

  But it was hope.

  Even if she was the only one who had any left.

  10

  Gray stood off the train without anyone to meet him.

  What did he expect? It wasn’t like he’d told anyone when he was coming home.

  He wondered if anyone would show up even if he had.

  He slung his bag over his shoulder and dragged his suitcase from the platform to the bus stop outside.

  Three years of his life over, just like that. He hoped that he would get a first in his degree, and that, by this time next year, he would be a fully qualified History teacher.

  Yet all that work felt like nothing as he returned to all the problems he had left.

  He loved his mum dearly, but she wouldn’t have wanted him to put his life on hold for her. She first became ill when he left for university, and she had told him not to abandon his aspirations for her – not that his yo
unger brother or sister had necessarily agreed. They had stopped talking to him when he refused to return home.

  But he knew his mum wouldn’t want him to come home.

  Still, he could hear Luke’s voice saying, who gives a shit, you come home anyway ’cause it’s our mum.

  And Gray’s response: unfortunately, we can’t all get by on weed dealing.

  The bus took him past familiar fields and he could still see him and Luke there, as kids, playing football. He could see through the window of his old classroom as he passed his old school, and he could see the bar they were kicked out of because Luke started a fight.

  An overwhelming mixture of nostalgia and dread cascaded down his body. The pit of his stomach shook, his chest tightened.

  Why did he feel so bad?

  Why was this making him so nervous?

  He’d done nothing wrong.

  The tree on the corner of the estate came into view and he pressed the button that indicated to the driver he wished to get off. It was the same tree he’d climbed up and fallen off at eight-years-old.

  He passed the same neighbours, albeit, they looked a little older, and it took a doubletake for them to realise who was looking at them. They all smiled and waved as they did, though.

  It was probably the best reaction he was going to get.

  He reached the house and realised he didn’t have a key. He tried the door but it was locked. He knocked on it, but no one responded.

  “Mum!” he shouted, though no noise responded to him.

  Why wasn’t she answering the door?

  He walked around the back and opened the side-gate into the garden. Mum had never locked the backdoor, maybe he could get in that way.

  He tried it, but it didn’t budge.

  He could see her, though. Inside the living room. Sat in a chair, motionless, her mouth wide and her eyes closed. She looked so… empty. Dormant. Like a doll flopped in a chair.

  He banged on the window.

  “Mum!”

  She didn’t wake up.

  He put his hands on the window and pressed his nose against it so he could see better.