Shutter House

by Rick Wood

She tried to catch a glimpse of the driver, but the windows were blacked out. She wasn’t even able to get a silhouette.

  She trudged home, thinking of nothing but the bank and the Mercedes.

  The arseholes who wouldn’t give her the money, and the arsehole who had too much.

  Just as she thought it, an idea crept upon her.

  No.

  Stupid idea.

  Stupid, stupid idea.

  She could end up in prison. They all could.

  Then again, did she care?

  In prison with her mum alive, or out of prison standing by a grave?

  No question at all.

  She arrived home to find Luke and Gray in the living room. Luke was helping their mum finish a yoghurt whilst Gray sat on the sofa, watching.

  Neither of them spoke.

  “Hey, Luke,” she said, “could I talk to you in the kitchen?”

  He looked to her, to the yoghurt, to their mum and back at Amber.

  “Sure,” he said.

  “I’ll take it,” Gray offered, taking the yoghurt reluctantly handed over by Luke.

  Luke followed Amber, glancing over his shoulder at Gray, feeling a little resentful, but quietly pleased that he was doing something to help.

  Once they were in the kitchen, Amber shut the door and looked at him, nervously biting her lip.

  “What is it?” Luke asked, looking concerned.

  “I just had a question,” Amber mused, “and I wondered if you might know the answer.”

  “Oh yeah, what’s that?”

  Amber couldn’t help it. She felt her face twist into conniving, sneaky smirk, a look that announced that she was up to something, a look that announced the initial thoughts of a wicked plan.

  “I was just wondering,” she said, “how easy it would be to rob a house?”

  Part III

  YOU WANT TO DO WHAT?

  14

  Sheila Hamsmith was yesterday’s news.

  The press was still yapping on about it, yes, but for him – she was done.

  Dusted. Mutilated. Violated. Dead.

  Now it was time to dispose of the body.

  Unfortunately, this was posing him quite the dilemma. He’d previously had two pigs that he kept on his land – far enough from his back entrance that he didn’t have to smell them, close enough that he didn’t have to lug a body too far.

  Pigs are glorious creatures.

  Not for petting or loving or anything, of course.

  But for eating.

  For example, did you know that pigs will eat every single part of a human body?

  They will eat anything.

  He wasn’t quite sure how he’d known this when he came up with the genius idea a few months ago, but he was glad he had. Those two pigs he bought were the best investment he’d ever made – they disposed of every inch of evidence.

  But those two pigs died.

  It was an unfortunate accident, really.

  He couldn’t be bothered to go out and find a woman to kill, so pigs were the next best thing.

  Besides, kill a woman and you can’t have bacon the next morning.

  Come to think of it, why was he growing such a particular penchant for women?

  There was a time when he catered for men – not sexually, not in that way, but more in his morbid fascination. He was curious as to what would happen if you walked up to someone who pissed you off and kept beating them and beating them and beating them until they went limp – then kept beating some more.

  In fact, the first person he’d killed was a man. Once he’d decided he wanted to murder someone, he’d had to choose who to murder.

  That was when he’d searched for Jasper Pearson on Facebook.

  He still held onto a memory of being fourteen-years-old, braces fixed to his teeth, and being pantsed repeatedly by Jasper Pearson – the boy whose parents had so much money that their last name was on a metal plaque outside the private school they both attended.

  There were a few pictures of Jasper Pearson on Facebook, outside his new home, with a street sign in the distance – one that really had to be zoomed in on to read – and a house number behind Jasper’s smug tosspot face.

  Jasper had been almost too easy to find, which had made the murder less satisfying than he’d hoped…

  Anyway.

  Enough about Jasper. He’d long since been digested.

  Back to the pigs.

  He was hesitant to just google how to buy pigs – as, surely, if someone was to check up on his internet history, they would come across this and consider it to be suspicious. It was almost as bad as googling how do I get rid of a body?

  He readied a reason in case he needed it. He had a lot of land, so much so he’d had to employ a full-time gardener. He could quite easily say he’d decided to use some of it for farming.

  Yes, farming.

  Perfect.

  Not for disposing of the remains of his fetish for mutilation.

  A gurgle stopped him from his thoughts. Eve had woken up, and she was just beginning to realise she was bound by rope.

  Eve was the perfect victim, really, as she was a prostitute. Not that he ever felt guilty about killing someone, but he felt even more not guilty when killing a sex worker.

  After all, it’s what they are there for, isn’t it?

  She began screaming.

  He had a migraine coming.

  He picked up a mallet, lifted it back, and swung it into her face and left it there, wedged between her newly loosened eye and collapsing teeth.

  She stopped screaming, and he was finally able to return to his computer.

  His first results showed him how to purchase something called a micro pig. It appeared that a new fad had arrived where people were buying micro pigs for pets. This was both pathetic and useless.

  Pathetic – as why would you have food as a pet?

  Useless – as a pig that size would never be able to digest Eve.

  Eve was a slender, beautiful woman, yes – but a pig that size would still get full way too soon.

  No, best keep looking.

  He narrowed down his search.

  Buy pigs online.

  A site offering pigs to be rehomed, a site called Preloved, appeared first. The site name made him gag.

  Another result appeared: suckling pigs online.

  He gagged once more, then realise he’d read it incorrectly.

  He redefined his search again, beginning to find it tiresome, but thinking he could hardly allocate his secretary this task without the nosy little bitch asking irritating questions.

  Adopt pigs for farm.

  The RSPCA came up first.

  He threw the computer across the room, taking delight in the smashing of the screen against the far wall, its bits and pieces falling over Eve’s static face like metal rain.

  Fuck it, he’d just get acid instead.

  How long does a body take to dissolve in acid?

  He laughed. He could hardly google that…

  Screw it, Sheila and Eve would be fine in this room for now.

  Actually, no.

  Sheila was beginning to stink.

  “Finnnnnnnne!” he moaned to himself.

  He’d go to the RSPCA and apply to adopt a pig. Hopefully he could have one within a few days.

  He sighed as he picked up his car keys.

  He really didn’t want to speak to the RSPCA.

  He fucking hated vegetarians.

  15

  Gray was the one who needed convincing.

  Luke tried to insist they didn’t need him – but Amber was stubborn in her decision. If they were going to do this, they were going to do it together.

  The first conversation went just as Amber had expected.

  “Are you guys insane?” Gray had protested. “You want to rob a guy’s house! You do know that’s breaking the law, right?”

  “I told you,” Luke had knowingly said to Amber, which wasn’t helpful.

  “If you can find a
nother way…”

  “I will,” Gray protested. “I will find another way!”

  “We don’t have much time.”

  “Give me until tonight, and I’ll find a way.”

  She’d had no choice.

  Even though she knew what would happen, she had to let him try it. Frustrating, yes, but she would be the same.

  They both had too much of their mum in them.

  So he’d been to the bank – in fact, he’d been to four. Then, he’d been to the valuables exchange to see what they’d give for their most invaluable of valuables. He’d then spend the rest of his afternoon ringing around local businesses, explaining the situation, and seeing what money they could raise.

  Now it was tonight, and Amber had never seen Gray go from so smartly put together to so dishevelled in such a short time. They sat around the kitchen table, the low wattage light above doing little to endow the room with light. Luke sat back in his chair, one hand leisurely draped over its back and the other on the table with a cigarette pressed between his fingers.

  Amber sat forward, her hands together.

  And Gray, well… Gray sat with his shirt poking out of his trousers and his hair in ungroomed tufts. An image she hadn’t seen of Gray in a long while.

  Then again, she hadn’t spent this much time with Gray in a long while.

  “Had a busy day?” Luke asked sarcastically and did all he could not to begin his cocky chuckle.

  Amber couldn’t help but smile. She could see him suffering the exasperation she’d been suffering while he was away. It was strange, but, for a moment, it made her feel less alone.

  “It’s…” Gray tried. “It’s impossible. There’s nothing. No one wants to help. It’s like no one cares.”

  “Wow,” Luke said, shaking his head. “You really don’t live in this world, do you, mate?”

  “Would you quit it?”

  “How about both of you quit it,” Amber interjected. “Gray, what’s it going to be? We need a decision.”

  Empty silence followed.

  Amber and Luke stared at Gray, waiting for a response that didn’t come.

  Until, eventually, it did.

  “Say we were going to do this,” Gray said. “How would we do it?”

  Amber looked to Luke. He was the one with the limited criminal experience, and she was about to find out just how limited that experience was.

  “The whole thing should take no more than thirty minutes,” Luke said, quickly and astutely. “We get in, eliminate the variables, then get out.”

  “The variables?” Gray repeated.

  “Things that could go wrong. Example – the guy who lives there. If his car is home, first thing we need to do is locate him.”

  “And do what with him?”

  “If you let me finish.” Luke lifted a hand and waited for silence, then stretched out the silence to make a point. “It’s a big house. If the geezer’s in there, we could easily wander around without ever bumping into him. I will locate him and either make sure we avoid that part of the house, or do whatever we need to keep him quiet.”

  “What does keep him quiet mean?”

  “Some things you’re better off not knowing. I’ll also need to dismantle the alarm once we’re in, which is fine.”

  “How on earth are you going to do that?”

  “Leave it to me. Once that’s all done, it leaves us time to get in, fill our bags, and get out.”

  “My only issue,” Gray said, all of them knowing he had far from one single issue, “is that, if he is so rich and the house is so big, he’s bound to have more security than just alarms. Like, CCTV or something.”

  “We wear masks until we’re sure.”

  “And I’m not so sure about you sorting him out…”

  “Fine! Option B – we go there and wait.”

  “Wait for what?”

  “For father fucking Christmas to arrive, what do you think? Until we see him leave.”

  Amber found her arms shaking. She filled with doubt, questions firing back and forth, her mind changing again and again.

  She only had to think of Mum in the next room to quell those doubts.

  “But – what about this guy we’re going to rob?” Gray asked.

  “He’s an arsehole,” Amber said. “Trust me.”

  “You know him?”

  “We’ve seen him in town, soaking pedestrians and speeding around in his Mercedes.”

  “And what if we get caught?”

  “So what?”

  “We go to prison.”

  “We get a year, maybe two. Then we come out and our mum is alive.”

  Gray flinched.

  “She’d do the same for us,” Amber claimed.

  Gray nodded, a nod that turned more vigorous.

  “Okay. Okay, right. Say we do this, say we go through with this – this preposterous idea – when? When would we do it?”

  Amber looked from Luke to Gray, to Luke, back to Gray again.

  She hadn’t thought about when, but it took three decisive seconds for her to answer.

  “Tonight,” she said. “We do it tonight.”

  16

  Amber’s afternoon was mostly taken up by pacing from one end of a room to another, staring at the window as if she was waiting for something, and changing her mind back and forth as much as her indecisive thoughts would allow her to.

  Whenever she needed reassurance that she was doing the right thing, that this was their only choice, that they had to do it; whenever her doubts began to overwhelm her – she sat by her mum for five minutes.

  And, as if written in fate, beside her mum was where she found herself at five minutes to five, just as the dark winter evening was settling in and it was precisely five minutes before they would leave.

  Then something happened – something she had not expected. Something that rarely ever happened, especially not in the afternoon when it would be time for Mum to nap.

  Mum spoke to her.

  “Hello, dear,” she said, so feebly yet so casually, as if nothing had ever happened, as if it was just them talking about her day at school or their weekend plans.

  “Mum?” Amber said, taken aback, hearing a voice she hadn’t heard in weeks, almost months.

  “How was…” her voice faded away, about to ask a question but not having the strength to finish it.

  Amber took both of her mum’s cold, clammy hands in hers.

  “What is it, Mum?” she tried.

  A vacant expression gazed back at her.

  “You were about to say something, what was it?”

  An empty face. Drooping eyes. Head dropping to the shoulder.

  “Come on, Mum, what was it? How was what?”

  Mum’s eyes closed.

  Amber dropped her head, keeping her hands in each of Mum’s.

  Tears shivered in the base of Amber’s eyes. She closed her eyes tight in an attempt to stop them, but her quivering lip was enough to stop her resisting.

  She took her hands from her mum’s and put them over her face.

  If either of her brothers walked in, she did not want them to see her like this.

  Amber closed her eyes and she was twelve again. Dumped by a boy she had a crush on when he refused to hold her hand.

  Such a ridiculous thing for a twelve-year-old to be upset about. Now she was older, she could never understand why she was in such a rush to ‘go out’ with a boy, and why she didn’t just enjoy being a child.

  Nevertheless, she had been inconsolable.

  Her dad had told her to stop it, she was just a kid. Neither of her brothers were interested, being stroppy, acne-ridden teenagers themselves. All of her friends were too young to understand.

  But Mum…

  She had placed her arms neatly around Amber as she sat on her lap and held her so tight Amber didn’t care if she could breathe. She had snuggled into her mother’s jumper, feeling it getting wetter and wetter, but not once did her mum care or object.

  He
r mum had just held her.

  Not saying a word. No advice. No attempt at reassurance. As if she knew there was nothing to be said in such a moment, that nothing could quell heartache, no succinctly crafted sentences could logicise this to being okay.

  She just allowed Amber to cry, with warm arms letting Amber know she was there.

  Now, on her knees and doing all she could to restrain her tears, Amber would give anything for her mum to just reach out, hold her against her jumper, and know that not a word was needed to be said.

  As it was, a gentle snore pushed through Mum’s dry lips. The only evidence she was alive.

  Amber shook her head. She couldn’t let her brothers see her like this.

  She stood, moving away from Mum to a box of tissues, and sorted herself out.

  She leant against the fireplace, one hand in her hair that suddenly felt so sweaty, the other propping her chin up.

  “You okay?” came Gray’s voice.

  She knew she had red eyes and a red face. She dried her eyes and blew her nose one last time.

  “I’m fine,” she said, turning around and feeling Gray’s wary stare – a look on his face that showed he hadn’t a clue what to say to help her. She suddenly felt as distant from him as she had ever been.

  “Are you sure, because–”

  “I said I’m fine.”

  Amber knew she had snapped but didn’t care. She didn’t want to talk.

  “It’s time to go,” said Luke, appearing behind Gray.

  She nodded and forced a smile.

  Luke didn’t ask her if she was okay. He could see she wasn’t. He just gave a simple smile back.

  With a glance back at Mum, Amber followed the others out of the house and to the car.

  17

  The car was filled with content silence.

  Amber wished she had her phone. Normally, at times like this, she would be procrastinating on social media, or playing another round of WordBubble. But Luke had been pretty clear – they were to leave their mobile phones at home in order to avoid leaving history of their route via their phones’ GPS; something that had put one of his friends in prison.

  So they continued in silence, idol hands stretching and tapping and twisting.