Dead Broken - Psychological Thriller / Horror

by Gerard Gray

  I picked up the book and examined it. It was nothing special, bordering on amateur. A dark shadow drifted across my mind. If this book were indeed the priest’s on the TV – and he was indeed a serial killer – how much would some sicko pay for it on eBay now? The book even came with proof of purchase. I could get a holiday out of this.

  That’s nice, Pete. Your mother would be proud.

  I shook the sick thought from my head and returned my attention to the cover of the book. No author, just the title. I headed back into the living room. The baby was holding the remote control in his hand, trying his best to change the channel; Depp was busying himself with a pile of broken LEGO. On catching my approach Michael held the remote up in the air and stumbled over towards me.

  “Oh sorry, Michael, I’ll put baby TV on for you now.” I took the remote off of him and changed the channel.

  “I want Boomerang,” Depp yelled.

  “You’re not the only person in this house, Depp. You can watch Boomerang after Michael watches his program.”

  “Mummy!”

  “Don’t start me, Depp. After Michael watches his program. OK?”

  A nursery rhyme was playing on the TV. Michael moved erratically, turning around, bouncing up and down – baby dancing. Depp ran out of the room in pursuit of his mother, crying his crocodile tears.

  “Give me strength.” I walked into the adjoining dining room and sat myself down at the PC. Within seconds I had the auction page back up. I scanned it quickly. What the…? I couldn’t believe it. How the hell did I ever buy this book? The page had hardly any information on it at all. All it said was: “A book about the youth of today, written by a brother. An interesting if not disturbing read. Never published; fast sale appreciated; one day invitation only”.

  Invitation? Surely he meant auction.

  Regardless, it had indeed been written by an amateur, his brother to be precise. Made sense; it was probably a pile of shit. Why did I even give this book a second glance, though? I couldn’t have been that drunk when I bought it. On saying that, I couldn’t remember the auction page, so I must have been a bit drunk. Maybe Karen was right. Maybe I was drinking too much lately.

  A thought suddenly occurred to me: I wondered if he had sold anything else. I examined his eBay feedback score. It was 0 – great.

  “Why is Depp crying? Are you on that computer again? You need to watch Michael like a hawk, always.”

  “The baby’s OK. Come and see this.”

  “I don’t have time, and neither do you.”

  “Believe me, you need to see this.”

  “What?” Karen marched into the room, her face like a cut snake. “Are you buying more toys on eBay again?”

  “No, no, I bought this a while ago. It’s the book that came today.”

  Karen said nothing.

  “Look at this.” I showed her the letter that came along with the book.

  She read it but didn’t smile. “Very amusing,” she said, handing it back to me.

  “What? No, no. Well, yeah, his name is amusing. But I don’t mean that. Look at this.” I clicked on the BBC web page hoping to find the story. I wasn’t disappointed.

  “I’ve got to go. I’m going to Braehead and then I need to take Depp to his sleepover.” Braehead was the local shopping mall, Karen’s tour of duty. When the going got tough the tough got shopping. On more than one occasion I had asked her how much she owed to that piece of plastic, but she had refused to tell me. So far I had managed to turn a blind eye to it, and today was going to be no different.

  “Hang on a second.” The BBC page finally came up, and Right enough the topic was splattered all over it. I didn’t have to read too long before landing on both the priest’s name and his address.

  “Read that.”

  Karen scanned the article.

  “See anything weird.”

  “I’m still reading.”

  “There,” I said pointing to the priest’s name, “Read there.”

  “Hmm… So that’s the dirty beast’s name.”

  I cringed. I could feel the fires of hell licking at her feet. The girl was going to burn for her blasphemy. I decided to defend our faith. “They don’t know if he did it yet.”

  “The news seems to think he did.”

  I couldn’t be bothered fighting with her. “Just look at the letter,” I said, holding back my anger.

  Karen read the letter once more.

  “Notice anything weird now?”

  “No, I’ve got to go.”

  “Oh for fuck’s sake, Karen. The name on the letter is the same name as the priest’s. And so is the address.”

  She looked at the letter and then she looked back at the article. “Hmm… So it is. Is it the same man?”

  “Don’t know. Quite a coincidence, though, aye?”

  Karen clicked on another article, still on the subject of the murders.

  CRASH!

  “What in God’s name are you boys doing?” I shouted, trying not to raise my voice too loud. I was saving the raised voice for when they were older, for when they had done something worthy of censure, like lighting a bonfire in their bedroom or playing on the motorway. Michael had just thrown one of his toys onto the floor, nothing too serious.

  “Right, could you do something useful, instead of sitting at that computer all day? Could you put Michael’s jacket and gloves on, and put him in his push chair.”

  “Please? But don’t you think it’s weird?”

  Nothing. She was gone.

  “For fuck’s sake,” I mumbled. And then I remembered something: “I’m going to Dumfries today. Is that OK?” I walked into the hall. “Karen. Karen! I said I’m going to see my mum this arvo.” I chided myself for using that word.

  “Yeah, yeah, I heard you. I remember. I’ve got to get Depp ready.”

  “So, it’s still OK?”

  “Suppose so.”

  She supposed so? “Karen,” I said, running up the stairs. “You suppose so? I can’t help it if my mum’s ill.”

  “Look, I didn’t mean that. It’s just that… it’s hard going. I need you to help me. It’s hard looking after two kids all day. I need some help.”

  “I do help.”

  Karen was attempting to push a jumper over a wriggling Depp. “Stay still, Depp. I’ve got to go. Will you be gone before I get back?”

  “I think so. I’ll probably leave in a couple of hours.”

  “Can you be back sharp, tomorrow? I’ll need you to pick up Depp from his sleepover.”

  Don’t get angry. Don’t get angry. “I’m only staying the night. I should be back around two.”

  “Are you going to see Ray while you’re there?”

  “I’m only going for the night. Probably not.”

  “I think it’d be good to see your friends. You haven’t seen them in a while. You should keep in touch with them.”

  “Hmm.”

  Karen gave me a disapproving look, but said nothing more on the matter. “Could you put the baby in his pram for me?”

  “Please?”

  “And could you get rid of that mess in the hall?”

  “Mess?”

  I headed back down the stairs to see what she was talking about. This time there actually was a mess, sort of. Lying on the sideboard in the hall was the ripped parcel the book had come in. I picked it up and walked into the living room. My steps slowed until I had come to a complete halt in the middle of the floor. I was staring hard at the stamps on the brown paper envelope. I was baffled. I had paid less than a pound in total for the book and postage. I counted up the cost of the stamps on the parcel. The total came to around £14.50. What the…? That meant he had made a loss of… £14.00. What was the point of that? It looked like he had paid me for the privilege of taking the book off his hands.

  “Michael,” I shouted, “Don’t touch that.” The baby was switching the SKY box on and off. He looked back at me with a glazed expression, paused, and then continued to press the switch
anyway. Typical, I thought to myself: the youth of today. I walked over to the machine and switched it back on. It was still on the news channel. I stared at the screen for a second before noticing that the rolling banner across the bottom had changed. They had found a third child – a young girl.

  She was dead.

  My heart disappeared down a dark hole. What possessed people to do such things? God, what must her parents be feeling right now? I lowered my head. I couldn’t even imagine. For a second I tried, though, I tried to imagine. But I didn’t have the guts to go on, to walk down that path. And even if I did, where would I go? It was a bit like experiencing the birth of your first child or the death of a parent. Until you’ve actually walked down that road, you’re only guessing, you really are.

  I searched for my youngest son, honed in on him and hugged him tightly with both arms. I couldn’t even imagine.

  Chapter 2

  Monsters

  It didn’t take me too long to get my things together. All I had to do was throw a pair of jeans and a tee shirt into a bag and fetch the toothbrush from the bathroom. I’m sure if Karen had watched me do this she would have had something to say about it. “You’re 37, not 17. You dress like a student”.

  Whatever.

  I was only staying the night, so I had no intention of going out for a drink with my friends. I am a lucky man where friends are concerned. I have always had loads of friends. But to be honest I hadn’t spoken to any of them in months, despite their concerned texts and emails.

  Maybe Karen was right. Maybe I should look up Ray.

  I opened the front door to be greeted by a bag of empty bottles. Bollocks, I still had to get rid of them. I would never hear the end of it if I didn’t. I could just put them in the back of my car, I mused. Dumfries was bound to have a bottle bank somewhere. I remembered the last time I had chucked a load of bottles into the back of my car. I had chauffeured the stinking bag around for about a month, much to the annoyance of Karen. Better get it over and done with now.

  The errand was painless enough. Thankfully it was one of those mixed glass bins you can just throw the whole lot into. I leaned back on letting the bottles fall, just on the off chance that one of them would break, throwing an errant splinter into my eye. It was on days like this that it would happen as well: bog standard normal days, days that looked like nothing was going to happen, then all of a sudden… BANG! Your life was over.

  I reached down to touch my stomach, just below the ribs. I didn’t press too hard; I knew better than to annoy that sleeping tiger. I stared hard at the bin. It could happen that easily. I knew that better than most.

  The bottles descended with an ear shattering clatter. No wayward splinters today. I guess I always had the drive home to my mum’s. Something terrible could happen to me on the way there. I had to breathe deeply on thinking this. It had taken me a long time to get back into the car. But I was over that now. I was better.

  But what if something terrible did happen, leaving my kids without a dad? It could happen. Shit, they would grow in the back streets of Glasgow, not knowing what an irregular verb was, saying saw instead of seen. And we all know the next step on the ladder after that: glue sniffing.

  I crossed the busy Paisley Road West, looking left and right. The traffic lights were only twenty meters away, but I couldn’t be bothered walking over to them. I placed my hand over my eyes as I watched for the oncoming traffic. The autumn sun was low in the sky, the summer well and truly over.

  But what would happen to my children if a car did hit me? I stood in the middle reservation, cars zooming past, not one below the speed limit. All it would take would be for a seventeen-year-old boy racer to mount the pavement at sixty miles an hour, killing me dead. Stranger things had happened. In fact, didn’t I read about such an incident in the newspaper only the other day? And wasn’t the driver only fourteen?

  Fourteen. The age of the girl murdered on the TV.

  My mind returned to the Priest and his book. Without thinking, I had placed it in my bag, along with my clothes. I still wasn’t sure if I was going to read it, though. The book’s ill put together cover was highly suspect. The pages looked quite new inside, but the cover was strange, a bit like desiccated leather. I shivered. It gave me the creeps just thinking about it. Why would I ever want to read something like that?

  But if I wasn’t going to read it, then why put it in the bag?

  I finally made it across the road in once piece. I was feeling tired so I decided to pop into a shop and get myself a drink. The flashing platitudes weren’t wrong when they said: “tiredness can kill”. On more than one occasion I had almost fallen asleep at the wheel of my car. It was like being hypnotised by the road or something. What I needed was some strong Scottish caffeine, some Irn Bru.

  As I left the shop I took a long, refreshing gulp. This stuff would probably kill me long before any car did. Tasted good, though – good but bad, a bit like pot noodles. How could something that tasted this good be so…?

  I stopped dead in my tracks.

  Irn Bru spilled down my chin.

  Fear rooted me to the spot.

  It was him. Fucking hell, it was him.

  For a second I was sure he was going to recognise me. But he didn’t. He walked right past me and on into the shop. I had to stop my heart from having an epileptic fit in my shirt’s top pocket. I began to walk fast. I had to get away. Of all the evils in the world that could have killed me that day, this was the last I would have dreamt of. Dreamt of? The word dream implies something wholesome. The word “nightmare” would better describe this scenario.

  I got to the end of the row of shops, turned the corner and collapsed against a wall. I took in a deep breath, consciously filling a large blue sponge that had suddenly appeared in my lungs. It slowly expanded filling my entire chest. I held the breath for a couple of seconds and then released it back into the world.

  I leaned against the wall. He hadn’t seen me? I repeated the breathing exercise. He didn’t recognise me. I held the inflated sponge at its zenith. Was it him, though? I had to be sure. I released the air. I needed to be sure if I was going to go through all that again.

  Go through all what again?

  Fuck that. My subconscious was making decisions without even asking me my opinion. I deliberately filled the large blue sponge once more. It was a breathing exercise the therapist had taught me to stop my world from turning into Silent Hill.

  And that’s when I spotted her.

  Fuck, it was him.

  Three youths had been involved in all, two boys and a girl, and the girl was crossing the road, walking towards the very shop I had just exited. I clutched my left arm as the large blue sponge turned into a block of lead. I closed my eyes, a wave of panic rushing over me, a raging surf dragging me under.

  I tightened the grip on my arm.

  Calm down. You’re OK. There’s no pain in your arm. Calm down.

  The wave retreated back out to sea leaving me soaking wet beneath my clothes. I leaned hard into the brick wall to support myself. I began to breathe deeply.

  I’m OK. I’m OK.

  This wasn’t good. I hadn’t felt like this in months. I held my buzzing hands out in front of my face. Did they look grey?

  I surreptitiously leaned around the corner and peered over towards the girl. She was standing at the shop laughing and talking to the boy. She looked younger than I had remembered, but he looked the same. Perhaps it was because of the way the girl was wearing her raven black hair. I looked again. Was it actually her, though? God, I had to be sure.

  I had to be sure?

  And tell me, pray mind, why it is exactly that you have to be sure? Fuck that. I have to walk away, that’s what I have to do. Too much has happened over the past six months for me to do anything about this now. It’s over. I’m better. I don’t need to do this to myself.

  I looked at my grey, sweating hands. I was breathing deeply. Did I feel weird? Perhaps I was ill. Would I know it if I were
still ill?

  My mind turned to my dad. His illness had forced him to retire at the age of 44. Was the same thing going to happen to me? If I remembered correctly, my dad didn’t know when he was ill either.

  Stop it. My illness had been very different to that of my dad’s. I’m not a manic-depressive. I had suffered from anxiety and depression for a couple of months, not manic depression.

  I cast the boy another painful look, my stomach disappearing beneath a black wave. I was in trouble here. If I even mentioned this kid to Karen she would leave me for sure. She had tacitly promised me that all those months ago, and her silence had spoken volumes. To hell with the house, she had said. She would march the children to her mother’s and she would never look back. At least, that’s what she would have said, if she had said anything.

  Fuck.

  I had to walk away from here. For the sake of my family, I had to walk away.

  I darted a glance up the street. I was beginning to feel self-conscious about how I must look to the neighbours. Was I acting like a weirdo, loitering with intent like one of those modern day paedophiles the papers were constantly warning us about? I quickly looked to see if anyone was watching me. The street was empty. Shit, I suddenly saw my next-door neighbour walking down his driveway. I started to walk towards my car.

  “Nice day,” he said, crossing the road.

  “Better than yesterday,” I replied, putting on a fake smile.

  “Better than yesterday,” he agreed. “Get the garden done before the autumn finally arrives.”

  “You’re not wrong there.” I gave him a goodbye wave and ducked into my car. That was more difficult than it should have been. I sat staring at the wheel. What was I thinking? I noticed my bag of clothes lying on the back seat. I had to go home to my mum’s. I had to forget all this stupidity and go see my mum. I could be wrong here. After all, it might not be them.

  Bollocks. It was them, alright.

  But didn’t you think that the last time?

  That was different. I was an emotional wreck back then, still in a damaged state of mind, talking to myself and everything. And he had looked like him: six foot, blonde, dressed in a blue tracksuit.