The BIG Horror Pack 2

by Iain Rob Wright

“So take something for indigestion. I need a drink and I don’t want to do it alone.”

  Blake paused for a moment before moving his hand away. Liz filled his glass to the top. “Can we go into the other room?” she said. “I’ve got to get my feet up.”

  Blake cleared his throat. “Yeah, erm, okay. There’s something up with the family room, though. I came home and there were a load of flies inside.”

  Liz frowned at him. “Flies? In this weather? Where would they come from?”

  “I think a mouse might have died.”

  “What is it with this family and death right now? Does everything around us have to die?”

  Blake gave her a pat on the back as they headed out of the kitchen. “I think we’re just the victims of bad luck. We’ll go crazy if we try to see sense in it.”

  Liz sighed. “Let’s sort out whatever it is in the family room tonight. I don’t want to have something rotting away while we sleep. It could be diseased.”

  “You sure? I can sort it in the morning.”

  Liz opened the door to the family room. “I’m not going to sleep much tonight anyway. Might as well deal with it now.”

  Blake followed her inside and noticed two things: one, it was freezing, and two, all the flies were gone.

  Liz rubbed at her arms. “The window’s wide open. You could catch your death in here.”

  “I wanted to get rid of the flies.”

  “What flies?”

  Blake looked around the room and couldn’t understand it. When he’d left there were still hundreds of the little black pests buzzing around. They’d been making no effort to escape then, but it seemed in the last five minutes they’d fled en masse.

  “There were hundreds of flies in here,” he said, already doubting himself. “I swear.”

  Liz closed the window. “It’s too cold in here. I’m going to go sit in the living room.” As she left, Liz stopped over by the side table and picked up Ricky’s picture frame. “I hope he keeps this photo in here. It’s nice. We all look so happy, don’t we?” She put the frame back down again and left.

  Blake moved to the side table and picked the frame back up again. Liz was right, they did all look happy, just like they’d been today before Val had died. He looked at Ricky and smiled at how young he looked. Just a couple years made such a difference. Things changed so fast.

  Blake stopped smiling when a fly landed on top of the picture. It perched right on top of Liz’s face. He tried to crush it, but it flew off. When Blake turned around, the fly had disappeared, but the chill in the room remained.

  7

  It was dark when Blake woke up. His head was heavy from too much wine and bile soured his mouth. For a while he blinked in darkness, wondering why he was awake. Then he heard Liz retching in the en suite.

  He slipped out from beneath the duvet and wobbled as he tried to stand up straight. Clumsily, he edged around the bed and headed for the toilet.

  “Liz, are you okay?”

  Another painful-sounding retch, followed by uncomfortable hacking. They must have drunk too much. Blake didn’t even remember the two of them going to bed. They’d shared several bottles of cheap Cabernet in front of the living room’s fire last night, sharing stories about Val and laughing, but then…nothing. His memories cut off right around 10pm when the news coming on.

  Blake shielded his eyes as he entered the bright light of the en suite. The smell hit him immediately: the eye-watering tang of vomit. Liz was stooped over the toilet, one arm propped up on the rim and trembling. Her hair was sodden, from either sweat or sick, and her eyes were bloodshot.

  “Liz, honey, are you okay?”

  “Do I…look…okay?”

  Blake got on his knees and bunched her hair behind her head, started rubbing her back. Another bout of retching took hold of her. The smell was toxic, a cocktail of wine and stomach acids.

  “Did you have too much to drink?”

  “Piss off.”

  “No need to be like that. I wouldn’t blame you if you’d drunk too much after what happened. I’ve got a headache, too.”

  “I’m ill.”

  “Really?”

  Liz spat a mouthful of something awful into the bowl. “My stomach’s killing me and my head is banging. This isn’t because of the wine.”

  Blake frowned. Liz had definitely drunk a lot last night, but she was an adult. If she said she was ill, should he doubt her? “Do you want me to call a doctor?” he asked.

  “Urgh…n-no—” She retched again and brought up another mouthful of odious spew. “No doctor. I just need a minute.”

  “Okay.” He carried on rubbing her back. The sounds she made were awful. “I wish I could make it easier for you, honey. I hate seeing you like this.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “I know, but I love you and I hate seeing you in pain.”

  “I’ve been in pain for a long time. Don’t see why you suddenly care now.”

  Blake flinched. “What?”

  Liz groaned. “Nothing.”

  “No, what do you mean?”

  “I mean…I mean…oh God!” Liz hitched forward and let out another stream of stinking vomit. It was the worst bout yet, just when Blake was sure she must’ve been running on empty. When it was finally over, Liz collapsed sideways into his arms, exhausted and beaten. “No more,” she said. “Please, no more.”

  Blake picked his wife up off the floor and carried her back to bed. He emptied the contents of the en suite’s bin into the shower cubicle—too tired to dispose of it properly—and then put it beneath Liz’s chin to use as a sick bucket. She was ice-cold when he covered her with the duvet, yet sweat glistened on her forehead like she’d just run a marathon. He got in beside her and stroked her back with his fingertips, listening to her moan and retch. He couldn’t say when he finally fell asleep, but he knew it was before she did.

  8

  Blake woke to find the door to the en suite locked and Liz inside showering. She refused to come out, or let him in, so he decided to leave her be until she was ready to talk. He tried to think back to how he and his brother had reacted when their parents died. Anger had certainly been one of the prominent emotions.

  It was a strange feeling to lose your parents. It was the kind of deep, enveloping pain that only came with truly life-altering loss, but at the same time it was accompanied by a degree of emotional liberation. Being without parents was like taking the stabilisers off a bike; both exhilarating and frightening. It was the final challenge on the road to becoming a true adult, beholden to no one but oneself.

  Blake headed downstairs and went into his office. There was something he needed to do before he started the day. He’d remembered to take his SSRI last night, but with things the way they were, it wasn’t enough to keep his nerves under control.

  The beta blockers were in the top drawer of his writing desk. The wide, oak workspace lay beneath a leaded bay window that looked out onto the field. It was the perfect window for a writer; a beautiful blank canvas. Instead of the green grass, Blake could imagine a ballroom full of guests or a crashed air plane with a sabotaged fuel line. The view from his office was his sandpit.

  Blake pushed one of the beta blockers from its aluminium pocket and dry-swallowed it. Then he stared down at the blank computer monitor. It’d been a while since he’d last written anything and a sheen of dust lay over the keyboard and mouse.

  As a younger man he’d been prolific, releasing several books a year—and at only forty he still had many tomes left to write—but lately he’d felt little desire to get started. He didn’t believe in writer’s block, and he knew that if he sat down and made himself write, he would hammer out a few thousand words easily enough. The problem was that lately he didn’t want to. Whether it was Ricky growing up, or a desire to spend more time with Liz, writing just wasn’t a priority. There were parts of life he hadn’t yet mastered, and writing seemed to stop him from doing anything else. Being a father and a husband was something
he wanted to be better at—perhaps before it was too late.

  Ricky bounded into the office then with the metal detector hanging around his neck like a Stratocaster. The bags beneath his eyes suggested he hadn’t slept much, but the grin on his face said the fuel tank had more than enough left to go a few more miles. “Can we go treasure hunting again, Dad?”

  Blake frowned. He wanted to spend time with Ricky, but he didn’t think trekking through the field was the right call for today. Liz would need them both. The only way to get over the dead was by focusing on the living.

  “Maybe later, buddy. I think we should stay inside today and see how your mum is feeling.”

  “Is she still being sick?”

  “You know about that?”

  Ricky nodded. “I heard her.”

  “Your mum is feeling under the weather, so you and I need to look after her. Maybe later, if she’s feeling better, we can play with the metal detector again.”

  “Should we make her toast?”

  “I’m not sure she’ll be up to breakfast, but maybe. We’ll see when she comes downstairs.”

  Ricky nodded. “Okay. Can I go play football outside until then?”

  “Okay. Just stay away from the road.”

  “I will, I don’t want to end up like Bailey.”

  Blake’s heart ached. “Go on, have some fun. You deserve it.”

  Ricky grabbed his ball from the porch and headed outside. Blake went into the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. He grunted when he found there was no Nescafe; only some speciality Brazilian blend Liz had bought at the market for three-times the price. With coffee off the menu, he plonked a bag of PG Tips into his favourite mug—a jumbo one with an old comic strip from The Beano on it—and brewed himself a strong tea. His anxiety ebbed away with the first sip and he wondered if it was the tea or the beta blocker he’d just taken. Maybe it was both,

  He took his mug of tea into the hallway and cursed when he noticed the alarm system blinking by the front door. Not only had he gone to bed in a drunken stupor, but he’d irresponsibly forgotten to set the alarm.

  One of the risks of living out in the country was that robbers saw you as easy prey. Making noise didn’t matter as there were no neighbours to hear, and the getaway was a breeze.

  The alarm system was wired straight to the security company, who’d contact the police if they couldn’t reach anybody at the house. Blake also kept a baseball bat in the bedroom inside the wardrobe but, ironically, there’d been no burglary attempts in the three years they’d lived there. Their former townhouse in Gloucester had been hit twice. The first time, they took the television, jewellery, and other easily replaced things. The second time, a man named Richard Heinz had taken things that were impossible to ever get back. Blake felt a shiver up his spine just by skirting the edges of that memory.

  Liz stomped around upstairs on the old, creaky floorboards. Blake hoped she was feeling better, and that she’d be willing to talk about the comment she’d made last night. She’d said she’d been in pain for a long time.

  Blake had suspected Liz was unhappy, but he suppressed it, partly because he didn’t know what to do, but mostly because he expected it to pass. Wounds could heal on their own over time, but last night he realised that perhaps that wasn’t always the case. His marriage was in trouble, had been for a while, and there was no ignoring it anymore. Something between he and Liz had faded, and he’d been too afraid to face it head-on.

  Blake Price, famous mystery writer and millionaire, anxiety-ridden mess, and failed family man. What scared him most was that without Liz, he wasn’t sure how stable he could be. It was her strength of character, her confidence and decision-making, that had allowed him to focus on his writing, knowing that all else would be managed by his industrious wife. That was why his writing had always been so important to him; it allowed him to control events, to reshape the world into ninety-thousand words and decide the outcome. In real life, he could only dread the worst for there was no way to know what would happen next. Liz had been his emotional guardian and without her he would fall apart.

  Blake scolded himself for being so selfish. Liz needed him right now and all he could do was worry about his own welfare. If Liz was unhappy with their marriage, it was his responsibility to face the consequences of letting things get that way. He just hoped it wasn’t too late to fix things.

  Blake was just about to head upstairs when Ricky came rushing back inside the house.

  “Whoa, slow down. What is it?”

  Ricky skidded to a halt in the hallway. “There’s a man,” he said. “There’s a strange man standing outside.”

  9

  Blake hurried out onto the driveway. The only person who ever visited unannounced was the postman, but this was a stranger. Blake prayed it wasn’t a fan of his. He did all he could to keep his address a secret, but in these days of Internet hacking and social networking, privacy was a fantasy.

  Blake loved his fanbase dearly, but meeting his readers made him awkward and uncomfortable. There was also the inherent danger of knowing nothing about them, or their motives.

  “What did he look like?” Blake had asked Ricky before heading outside.

  “Tall, dark hair, a bit like you, but younger.”

  Blake had frowned. “Huh?”

  “He looks like you.”

  From the driveway, Blake spotted a scruffy man strolling down the road, carrying a duffel bag over one shoulder. He was half-a-foot taller than Blake, and four years younger, but otherwise they looked just like brothers. And brothers they were.

  “Stevie?”

  Stevie came down the driveway, smiling his wide, mischievous grin that he’d had since he was a child. “Big bro, how you doing? I read Twinkle the other day. I especially loved the part where the broody vampire turns the high school sweetheart into a monster so that he can save her from a brain tumour. I wept for days.”

  Blake smirked. He was happy and relieved to see his little brother, but he knew that the bantering would now begin. “Look what the cat dragged in, after the dog ate it and shat it out.”

  Somewhere behind Blake, Ricky giggled. He had crept back out of the house and was now standing beside Blake. “Who is he, Dad?”

  “This is your uncle Stevie. You’ve met him before, but it’s been a few years.”

  Ricky frowned. “I think I remember.” But Blake knew he didn’t. Perhaps that was for the best. Ricky had last seen Stevie at his wedding to Cindi. Stevie had been wasted the entire time.

  “What are you doing here?” asked Blake. “Did you hear about Val’s heart attack?”

  “What? Oh, yeah. How’s everybody doing?”

  Blake shrugged. “As can be expected. Liz is shattered, losing her mum…but what can you do?”

  Stevie nodded slowly. He’d only met Val a couple times, but he’d always been very fond of Liz. “Poor mare. Sucks losing a parent.”

  “It certainly does. Well, I suppose you best come in. You fancy a coffee? I could offer you something stronger, but it’s…” he checked his watch, “11am.”

  Stevie rubbed at the thick stubble on his cheeks and sighed. “I guess I’ll have to go without a drink for a few hours, if you people are so civilised around here. Maybe I can raid your supply later.”

  They headed inside, Ricky bombarding his uncle with questions the whole way. Where did he live? What did he do for a living? Was he good at football? Did he want to go treasure hunting?

  “Ricky, go find your mother and warn her we have company.”

  Stevie nudged Blake in the ribs. “Warn her? What am I, a Jehovah’s Witness?”

  “You know what I mean. We weren’t expecting guests, and now isn’t exactly a great time.”

  “Sorry. I just wanted to see you guys. It’s already been too long, you know?”

  “Yes, I suppose it has.”

  Ricky ran off to find his mother while Blake and Stevie went into the kitchen. Stevie took a seat at the breakfast bar while Blake made tea. Th
ey took the hot drinks into the family room where they sat down on the recliners. It reminded Blake of the old days, plonking themselves in front of the living room telly—a 26” mahogany effect Grundig that had seemed huge in those days.

  Stevie cupped his hot mug in his hands. “So, tell me what happened.”

  Blake told his brother about the events of the last forty-eight hours, beginning with Bailey’s death and ending with Val’s skull cracking against the pavement beside the River Avon. “It’s just been a bad couple of days,” he said finally.

  Stevie pulled a face. “Sounds like it, man. I loved that little dog. Val…not so much. You know she called me a drunken buffoon at my own wedding?”

  Blake laughed. “Val certainly had a talent for telling people what she thought, but she loved Ricky and she loved Liz too, deep down. She just struggled to show it.”

  “Like our own mother,” said Stevie. “I have more memories of her putting her hand across our backsides than hugging us.”

  “She wasn’t that bad. You’re younger, you don’t remember. She used to have a good sense of humour. Sometimes when she laughed it sounded like she was having a fit. She just had a way of quickly flipping the other way, though. She was either extremely happy or extremely sad. I think I take after her that way. You’re more like Dad.”

  “You mean I have a drink problem?”

  Blake looked at his brother. There was no point denying it, but there was no need to give Stevie a hard time either. They were practically strangers nowadays, so what right did he have to judge? “Hey, you got the alcoholism and I got the mental illness. I think we both got pretty raw deals.”

  “Some say alcoholism is a mental illness.”

  “Maybe, but at least there’s an obvious cure.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Stop drinking.”

  Stevie looked hurt, but then chuckled. “You should write a book about it. With your name on the cover, it’d replace Alcoholics Anonymous overnight.”

  “Huh, I’d be lucky to write anything at the moment. I just can’t seem to get myself in the office lately. It just seems so…unimportant. Oh well. It’s not like I need the money.”