by M. V. Stott
‘Stupid, fucking wind!’ she yelled, before looking around to make sure no one had seen her picking a fight with the wind.
She wanted to be angry with Waterson. No, actually, she wanted to be completely bloody furious at him. The problem was, she could see where he was coming from. DCI Jenner, too. She knew they were right. What use was it chasing a nightmare? It’s not like they could lock the thing up. And apart from asking every woman in Blackpool of a similar age to Gemma and the other missing women if they’d ever dreamt about a rabbit mask, it was useless as a means of finding other potential victims.
And here was the main point: it didn’t help her find those who had already gone missing. It was a link, a really bloody strange link, but it didn’t help her get any closer to finding out what had happened to them, or where they were. Waterson was right. Not that she’d ever tell him that. But he was right. They had to work the other, tangible facts. Chasing phantoms wasn’t going to save those women, or any others.
‘DS Rita Hobbes, is that you?’
Rita jerked back at the sudden intrusion to see a tall, pallid man in a purple coat smiling down at her.
‘Who’s asking?’ she replied, pushing herself up on to her feet and taking a step back to create a safer distance from the man, her hand ready to pull her extendable baton.
‘We met at some police function or other, I think. Don’t tell me you don’t remember.’
Rita peered closer at the man and found herself caught by his wide, dark eyes. They seemed to almost shimmer. To draw her in. To make her not want to look away. ‘Function?’
‘Yes. Two years ago, perhaps? I’m DI Carlisle, do you remember me now?’
Rita shook her head, breaking eye contact. It felt like she’d taken four shots of vodka in quick succession. ‘Two years?’
‘That’s right. We met and spoke, very briefly.’
Something seemed to tease at her memory. It was like she almost believed him. Almost. ‘Can I see some I.D?’
The man’s smile grew somehow wider, revealing more teeth than seemed possible for one person’s mouth. ‘But of course. Where are my manners?’ He reached into his coat and pulled out a card. ‘There, look, DI Carlisle.’
Rita looked at the card, then back at the pale, tall man, and then back at the card again. ‘I see,’ she said.
The man nodded and pocketed the card again.
The thing was, Rita really did see. And what she had just seen was not the identification of a detective in the police force, but a yellowed, useless Blockbuster Video card.
Was he trying some Jedi mind trick on her? Some Derren Brown style mentalist magic? Or maybe he was just some random nutter. Well, whatever he was trying to do, it had completely failed. Not that Rita had to let the strange man know that – better to let him continue his ruse and find out just what his game was.
‘Sorry, I think I do remember you now, actually. At that police function.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Yeah, names and faces, not my area.’
‘Well that is unfortunate, considering your line of work.’
Rita laughed, or at least pretended too. ‘So, what do you want, Inspector?’ she asked.
‘I understand you are in the midst of a most fascinating case.’
Rita’s hand twitched towards the baton again. ‘Yeah, it’s an unusual one all right,’ she replied.
‘You see, I’ve been involved in a similar case down in London. Women going missing, men in animal masks, horrid situation, and I thought you and I could share everything we know so far, and perhaps assist each other. Now, doesn’t that sound like a very good idea, Rita?’
She felt drawn to his eyes again.
‘A very good idea,’ continued the man, ‘to tell me what you know.’
Rita wrenched her eyes away and staggered to one side, yanking out her baton. ‘Okay, whatever it is you’re doing, mate, you can stop, all right?’
The man raised an eyebrow and frowned, ‘I’m simply trying to help out a fellow officer.’
‘Really? I didn’t know Blockbuster Video had its own branch of police.’
The man’s eyes grew wide in surprise, then he laughed. ‘Ah, you saw through my clever, clever ruse. I am impressed, Rita Hobbes. Most believe it with very little effort on my part.’
‘Who are you and what do you know about the missing women? Are you involved?’
Rita began to slowly circle the man, a tactic she’d learned to keep the person off guard, off-balance, and keep oneself in control. Unfortunately, the man didn’t turn, didn’t seem the least bit concerned. Instead, he stood stock-still and perfectly relaxed. He seemed more amused than anything.
‘I’m just another concerned citizen, looking to bring an end to this tale of tragedy.’
‘Right, of course, and if I were to search that coat of yours, I wouldn’t find a rabbit mask stashed inside, right?’
‘Oh, I’m afraid if I was that wicked fellow and I was showing you my true face, you would no longer be standing, you would most likely have lost your mind completely.’
‘I’ve seen him.’
The man turned now, curious. ‘Oh?’
‘The man in the rabbit mask. Just for a second.’
‘Well. That’s… unexpected. First the resistance to my charms, and now this. Aren’t you full of surprises, detective?’
‘Who is he?’
‘You do not wish to know.’
‘Who is he?’ Rita demanded.
It was stepping forward in anger, losing control, that did it. As the red mist descended, Rita had just enough time to see a flash of bright, shining teeth, before the man’s fist connected with her jaw and things went very, very black.
10
Rita woke annoyed and confused, which was not an uncommon experience.
‘Sucker-punching bastard,’ she said, sitting up and rubbing her aching jaw. She checked her phone. It didn’t look like she’d been unconscious long, a minute or so at most.
Rita got to her feet, still a little groggy, and slowly made her way off the beach and over to her car.
The case just seemed to be getting stranger.
She slumped behind the steering wheel and reached for a half-drunk bottle of water that had been sat in the car’s passenger footwell for a good week. The water was tepid and a little foul, but it helped drag her the rest of the way back into the light.
Nightmares, people in animal masks that seemed to be able to disappear in an instant, and now this man. This strange, pale man with his odd way of talking and eyes that made you want to believe things that were clearly untrue. Carlisle, he’d said his name was. Rita wondered if that was just another lie. She’d have to use the name for now. She reached for her notebook and began to scribble down the events of her beach encounter. This man definitely belonged on the strange column of this case. The column neither her partner or her boss wanted anything to do with, but a column that was getting crowded and impossible to ignore.
It was just as she was about to start the car and drive home that something caught her eye in the rear-view mirror.
It was a man, crossing the road, about fifty metres away.
The man’s clothes looked very old-fashioned. Like something a gentleman might wear a hundred or more years ago. Oh, and he wore a rabbit mask.
Rita was almost knocked out for a second time as her head connected with the window of the door in her rush to exit the car.
‘Shit!’ she said, rubbing her head as she stepped out, eyes searching for the rabbit-masked man.
She couldn’t see him. ‘Shit, shit, shit it!’
Rita broke into a run, almost taking out a screaming cyclist as she did so, as she sprinted in the direction it looked like Rabbit Mask had been heading in. Chip shops and souvenir stands stuffed with cheap tourist tat flashed by as she hurtled forward, skidding to a halt at the corner, and glancing wildly around for any sight of her quarry.
‘You!’ she shouted, grabbing the shoulders of a start
led, elderly man. ‘Police! Me! I am police! Have you seen a man? Man in a mask?’
‘What? What man? What are you—’
‘Rabbit mask! He must have passed here, rabbit mask, rabbit mask!’
‘What the bloody hell are yo—’
Rita cast him aside and carried on running. How could she have lost him? It wasn’t as if he could easily just blend into the crowd, not with those clothes and the giant, bunny ears—
There!
Wait, it wasn’t him, this one was different. He was dressed the same, and had a mask on too, but this one looked like a…. like a hedgehog?
Rita shrugged and ran in the masked man’s direction as he headed inside a games arcade.
She stood, panting, a few feet into the garish, busy, and monstrously loud arcade. It was all claw games that you never won, penny-shove machines, and ancient shoot ‘em ups. None of the so-called thrills on offer had changed since she was a kid.
Rita strode in, dodging the small, whooping children that scuttled by, almost bringing her down to the mangy carpet as she tried to squint past all the flashing lights and catch a glimpse of spines or rabbit ears.
A glimpse, that was all, of old, tatty fur, between the hustle and bustle, and Rita was off again, swerving through the public as though she were skiing a slalom.
‘Oi, you, stop, police!’
She found herself outside a double door with the words PRIVATE stencilled on them, and didn’t pause for a moment before pushing her way inside.
The dim room beyond was stacked high with dusty, broken games machines and large plastic bags full of soft toys, no doubt ready to replenish one of the machines in the arcade should anyone actually ever manage to win one.
Rita slowly pulled out her standard issue extendable baton and edged further into the room, cushioning the door with one hand as it swung closed, masking the noise. She needn’t have bothered. It quickly became apparent that she was alone.
‘That’s not possible…’
She began to search the room, looking for another way out; a window, a door, a fire exit. But there was nothing. There was only one way out, and that was the way she came in. Rabbit Mask had come through here though, she was certain of it.
‘Shit. Shit, shit.’
Rita sagged and leaned against the wall. It took a few moments to realise cool air was pooling around her ankles. Cool air that was emerging from the crack beneath the door she was leaning upon. A door that she was very, very sure had not been there moments ago.
Well, of course. Men in animal masks that come and go, and doors that appear by magic, Rita said to herself.
She stepped forward and placed her ear against the door, which looked like it belonged to an ancient, crumbling village church, and not the back room of a clapped-out seaside arcade.
Rita took a breath then tried pulling on the door’s cold, brass handle. It swung open and the cold from behind it wrapped its arms around her. Shivering, her breath now a fog, Rita flexed her fingers around the baton and stepped past the door and into what lay beyond.
What lay there was a dank, stone corridor, the arched roof of which was a little too low for her to stand up straight. Slowly, she made her way towards the light at the other end, her boots squelching across damp, mossy ground.
‘Okay, okay, nothing to be terrified about, all perfectly normal…’
She glanced back to make sure the door she’d entered through hadn’t disappeared, and was relieved to see the piled up bags of soft toys still visible in the distance.
There were no other doors or windows in the corridor, just the opening ahead. A creepy stone corridor, leading to a mysterious chamber.
Rita began to wonder if getting sucker-punched had done her some serious brain damage.
The corridor came to an end and she found herself before the arched entrance to the chamber, the shadows of flickering flames licking across the ground towards her.
‘Well, here goes something.’
Rita stepped into the room.
Rita wasn’t sure what, exactly, she was expecting to find in the hidden room at the end of the stone corridor, but what her eyes took in as she shuffled into the chamber was certainly not it.
It was Gemma Wheeler, Chris Farmer’s missing cousin, draped in a blood-red robe, chained to a large block of stone.
‘Holy shit.’
Rita raced across to the woman, who was a little too motionless for her liking.
‘Gemma? Gemma!’
Rita slapped at the woman’s cheek, eventually rousing a groan. The woman’s eyes flickered. She was still alive!
‘Oh thank bloody Christ,’ said Rita. ‘It’s okay, Gemma, it’s me, it’s DS Rita Hobbes, your cousin’s, uh, friend. I’m getting you out.’
That turned out to be easier said than done. The chains were heavy, locked, and fixed firmly to the block of stone she was laid out on. Rita had seen enough Hammer Horror films growing up to know what this sort of situation was leading to: a blood sacrifice. But this was twenty-first century Blackpool for God’s sake, not some backwards village in the middle-ages.
‘Help… please,’ begged Gemma, her words a slur.
‘It’s okay, Gemma, I’m here, nothing’s gonna happen to you, okay?’
All well and good saying that, but she couldn’t see how she was going to free the woman, not without leaving her alone and going for help. It was then that Rita noticed the stone altar, and what was perched atop it.
An axe.
A small, old, hand axe.
Rita snatched it up. ‘Looks like you’re going to be doing more saving than killing,’ she told it, and made ready to bash the chains, free Gemma, and get the hell out of there.
But as she turned, she saw that she and Gemma were no longer alone.
‘Shit!’ she said, jerking back in shock.
Stood in the entrance to the stone tunnel was a tall man in crimson robes. He wore a large goat mask over his head.
‘Game’s up, you sick bastard! Take off that bloody mask, right now!’ The man didn’t move. ‘Look, you’re done, I’m police, all right? And this is the last woman you or your other mask-wearing sickos snatch, you got that? Now kneel down and put your hands behind your head or—’
Rita wasn’t sure what happened exactly, but there had been a flash of intense light, and what felt like a car driving directly into her chest. She sat up from where she’d been knocked down to see the robed man walking slowly towards her.
Rita was in a horror movie, that’s all there was to it, and this idiot was about to make her his latest victim.
‘Not bloody likely,’ she said, and grabbed the hand axe from where she’d dropped it, pushing herself back up and brandishing it. ‘That’s right, prick, you’re nicked!’
As she ran at the man he raised his hands and seemed to mould a ball of crackling, bright white light, his fingers dancing as though he were playing the air like a piano. Rita pulled to a stop and gawped. ‘What is that? Stop that!’
The man did not stop. Instead, he raised the crackling ball of energy and threw it at her. She should have leapt out of the way, but—acting on reflex—she swung the axe at the ball. Rather than sending her flying again, the ball ricocheted off the axe and flew back at the masked man, hitting him, and causing him to disappear in a puff of smoke.
Rita breathed heavily, staring incredulously at the spot the man had been only heartbeats before. She stared down at the axe in her hand, then back at the vacant space.
‘Holy crap.’
‘Help…’
Rita shook off the shock and ran back to Gemma. ‘Okay, hold still,’ she said.
She lifted the axe high, then swung it down at the chain clasped to Gemma’s ankle. To her delight and surprise, not only did the strike cause the chain to break, but all of the chains attached to her shattered and swung free.
‘Huh, talk about lucky. Come on, you.’
Rita levered the still mostly out-of-it Gemma Wheeler up on her feet and guided her towar
ds the stone corridor. As she went, she cast one final glance to where the goat-masked kidnapper had been standing before the ball he’d conjured had bounced back at him.
‘Yep,’ she muttered, ‘that beach bastard definitely gave me brain damage.’
11
Struggling under Gemma Wheeler’s weight, Rita carefully weaved her through the games arcade and out on to the street, where she gently lowered her on a nearby park bench.
‘Gonna… gonna kill… me…’ Gemma moaned.
‘It’s okay, you’re fine, he’s not gonna touch you, love,’ replied Rita, sliding the little hand axe into her belt and reaching into her coat for her phone to call for an ambulance.
‘Emergency services, which service do you require, ambulance, fire, or police?’ came the reply.
‘This is DS Rita Hobbes, I require an ambulance,’ she replied.
There was a silent pause.
‘Emergency services, which service do you require, ambulance, fire, or police?’ repeated the woman at the other end.
‘Ambulance, I need an ambulance down at Archer’s Old Arcade!’
Another pause.
‘Hello? Can you hear me? What’s the nature of your emergency?’
‘Forget it!’
Rita hung up and shoved her phone back in her pocket. Blackpool’s mobile phone coverage had always been spotty. Yet another reason to give the place the old heave-ho.
‘Right, come on you, let’s get you to the hospital.’
Rita pulled Gemma back up to her feet and steered her down the street and back to where she’d abandoned her car.
If Rita hadn’t been in such a hurry, if she hadn’t been more concerned with talking to Gemma, with keeping her awake, she might have noticed all the funny looks she was getting. The gawping stares from other drivers and their passengers as they sat together at traffic lights, or as she swerved past them at way past the speed limit.
But she did not notice.
Soon enough, the tyres of Rita’s car screeched as she screamed to a halt in a vacant ambulance bay directly in front of the hospital’s main entrance. She ran round the car, opened the passenger door, and attempted to get Gemma out and back on her feet.
