Roberts closed his eyes and screamed.
MYSTERY DISSAPEARANCE OF
CONVICTED SERIAL KILLER
A nationwide manhunt began yesterday after the mystery disappearance of a convicted serial killer.
Marco Roberts (35), otherwise known as the DEMON DISMEMBERER, was convicted of more than 90 killings over a sixteen year period, and had been transferred to The Walls unit of Huntsville State Penitentiary, Texas, to await execution by lethal injection.
Upon arriving at five p.m. to deliver Roberts his last meal, guard staff were baffled to find Roberts missing, but his cell securely locked. Staff Sergeant Julius Remy, the senior guard on duty, reportedly said: “Nobody came in or out of here all day. That I can guarantee.”
Security footage was retrieved, but found to be severely damaged due to an equipment malfunction.
Although there is no evidence to suggest that Roberts escaped, authorities have advised the public to remain vigilant, keep their doors and windows locked, and to report Roberts at once if spotted. The search continues. If you have any information as to Roberts’ whereabouts, please contact the police action helpline at 555-6342.
THE PRANK
I’m an old man now, but I think I can finally pluck up the courage to talk about the day Snoddy, Denton and I killed that kid, back in the summer of 2010. People say that time heals, but I don’t buy into that. If anything, it makes things worse. You may wonder if I’m sorry for what happened—well the truth is, not a day passes without me wishing I could turn back the clock and change things. But I was just a kid, and at fifteen sometimes you do things just to keep up with the pack. Stupid, I know, but back then it made sense. You’d think carrying this around with me for so many years would be punishment enough, but I think I always knew—deep down—that it wasn’t… Bad luck has followed me ever since that day, bound to me like a ball and chain. My mother and father were killed in a car accident when I was eighteen, and my sister, Tina, was institutionalized for the murder of her best friend—only to escape, disappearing to God knows where… Because of this, I have done all I can to keep my own family close, protected from something I guess I always knew would catch up with me… Now he’s back, and he’s coming.
I am writing this from a hotel room in Southend, having fled my home when he first came for me. I know now there is no way to escape it. My best guess is that they helped him to find me, the dark things. The rats and the spiders, and the festering things that live in the black, wet places of the world. He’s one of them now, you see. Kept alive by what? The need for revenge? The pain of betrayal? Who can say for sure… I can already hear him, scratching around behind the walls, and I’m too old and too tired to run anymore.
That day, the day it happened, had been a hot one. It had been a rare English summer that year, without winds and rain. We Brits always make the most of summers like that, but the flip side is that boredom soon sets in, especially for restless kids with no school to go to. Snoddy and I were hanging around my place, generally wasting the day away, when he suddenly asked me if I had heard of the old Fisherman house. I had, of course—everyone had. It was one of those places everyone had a ghost story about, usually one that came from a friend of a friend, or from somebody who knew someone who knew someone else who used to live there. That kind of deal. It was, of course, the usual schoolyard bullshit. I looked back at Snoddy, his skinny face taut and determined. The wheels were already turning in his mind as he watched me and waited for my answer.
“You wanna go break in?” he asked me, flashing his pierced lipped, crooked-toothed grin. I didn’t, not really, but I couldn’t say that. I was already technically grounded, and didn’t want to push my luck. But you can’t say that when you’re a kid, not when the pressure of expectation is heaped on you by your friends. So I reluctantly agreed.
We picked Denton up on the way. Most people didn’t like Denton. The other kids said he was fat, but he was just big for his age, with a huge barrel chest and broad shoulders. He played rugby for the school team, and although at a glance he did look a little chubby, he was fitter than most of the other kids in our year group. They would never say it to his face, of course. Denton had a well documented mean streak and a bit of a reputation as a bully, and I think that without him driving things along, that day might have been much different. Right from the start, I could tell he was itching for a confrontation. You could sense it in the air, if that makes any sense. I think Snoddy felt it too as we walked in tense silence past houses ripe with the smells of freshly cut grass, and the meaty charred smell of barbecues going full tilt.
The Fisherman house had been empty for over thirty years, and depending on who you talked to, had either been the site of a grisly murder, or the home of an old man who kidnapped and ate local kids. I never believed any of it, and although I knew it was just a building—bricks and mortar—it still gave me a small chill when I first set eyes on it. The grass out front was hip high and a sickly, faded yellow, and the house itself was an ugly stain on what was otherwise a nice area. Its walls seemed to bow inwards, and the windows were covered by graffiti-scrawled wooden boards. It certainly looked the part, and despite my disbelief, I could imagine any one of the stories about it being true. Suddenly I regretted going, and wondered if Denton and Snoddy felt the same. I thought Snoddy might’ve called it off, given the chance, but not Denton. The look in his eyes said he was going ahead with it, no matter what. So with our pride on the line, and none of us prepared to state our concerns, we went on.
We saw Steve as we neared the dilapidated porch. He was sitting cross-legged in the sun, writing feverishly on an old notepad. Denton never liked Steve. There was a history between them, and Denton had made it his personal mission to make Steve’s life hell for the last couple years of school. Steve was brush thin, with long gangly arms and a thick greasy mop of hair. He wore thick, horn-rimmed glasses that fit him poorly, and he was always pushing them back up his face when they slid down his nose. He was one of those kids who wore the cheap brands of clothes, the ones who always turned up for school with dirty shirts. You could almost smell the poverty on him, but he always did well in class.
“What are you doing out here?” Denton asked aggressively, flashing a crocodile grin.
Steve looked up, but didn’t answer, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously. You could see how scared he was.
“Nothing, just researching the house for my website.”
“What website?” Snoddy asked as he absently pulled the grass out in huge clumps.
“Urban exploring. I write about abandoned places like this and review them.”
He flashed a hopeful grin, only to realize no one else was smiling.
“Geek. Lemmie see,” Denton said as he snatched the notebook. I could see that Steve wanted to object, but experience had taught him not to fight the bullying, but to go along with it. He looked at me then, and I gave the briefest of nods. I never had a problem with him, see. We were never friends, we never moved within the same circles, but I never had anything against him. My eyes flicked to Denton, who was leafing through the notebook.
“This is garbage. No mention of the good stuff like the murders, or the dude who ate all those kids. Maybe I should tear this up and you can start again, eh geek?”
Panic flashed over Steve’s eyes, and I saw that Denton meant to do it.
“Hey, Denton, leave him be. He’s not bothering anyone,” I said, giving him my best stern look. I knew he could probably take me in a fight, if it came to it, but I was good at bluffing. Denton did back down, tossing the notepad to the porch where it raised a puff of dust.
“I was just fuckin’ with him. Relax.”
There was an awkward silence as we stood there, nobody quite sure what to do next. It was Snoddy who made the first move. He hopped up the three porch steps to the door and tried the handle.
“Fucker’s locked,” he said, pulling his cigarettes out of his pocket and offering one to Denton, who took the offering wordlessly.
The pair lit up, then Denton regarded the door.
“Course it’s locked. It’s hardly going to be open, is it? Too many crack heads and winos around. Let me try.”
Denton puffed his chest out and brushed past Steve, who flinched involuntarily. Denton rattled the door, and even tried breaking it open with his shoulder, but as old and tired as the door looked, it wouldn’t budge.
“What about the windows,” I said, half hoping there would be no way in and we could give up on the entire thing. I had a horrible feeling in my gut, not quite déjà vu, but that light, giddy feeling that sometimes comes with knowing something isn’t quite right. Snoddy gave the windows a quick once over, and tugged at the boards.
“No chance, those fuckers are solid,” he said as he joined Denton in sitting on the porch.
“That’s that then,” I said, hoping I sounded casual.
“Suppose so,” said Denton, glaring at Steve as if it was somehow his fault.
We would have left then, and none of what came later would have happened, if Steve hadn’t spoken up. I think maybe he was trying to win us over, maybe make some friends. Whatever the reason, he pushed his glasses up his sweaty face and said he knew a way in.
“Go on then. Don’t leave us hanging. Tell us,” ordered Denton.
He did.
Ten minutes later, we had squeezed our way through one of the kitchen windows at the back where a board had been partially pulled away. Steve was with us, although he hadn’t wanted to come. It was written all over his face, but Denton had insisted. So the four of us stood breathless in the gloomy dilapidated kitchen. The inside of the house was bare, and sunlight diffused dust motes hung heavy, making it hard to breathe. Graffiti covered the walls, some of it colorful, some vile. Hundreds of orange-tipped drug needles littered the floor, and the air was acrid with the stench of rot and urine.
“Watch your step,” Denton said as we made our way through the kitchen.
“Fuckin’ smack needles everywhere,” Snoddy muttered under his breath.
“You think there’s anybody here?” Denton asked with a huge Cheshire grin.
“Could be. Hell, we got in easy enough,” I said, still unable to shake the horrible feeling in my stomach.
We came into the living room. There was a huge graffiti mural on the wall of a woman being raped by a multi-headed snake, and more evidence of drug use. Several empty beer cans were stacked in a neat pyramid in the corner, and there was an old rolled up sleeping bag covered in a thin layer of black mold, which spread like spider webs across the corners of the walls.
“What now then?” Snoddy asked, his face looking waxy and tired in the diffused light of the room.
Denton grinned and kicked the can stack, sending them clattering noisily to the ground.
“Fuck’s sake, Denton!” Snoddy hissed as we collectively held our breaths, waiting to see if some crazed crack head would come racing down the steps, or out of one of the adjoining rooms. I realized then that ghosts were the least of our problems; the living were far more dangerous. But nobody came. No crazy old man, no cracked out lunatics.
“Suppose that answers the question. It’s just us. Let’s take a look around,” Denton said as he walked off towards the stairs. So that’s what we did. We split up and explored. There wasn’t much to see really. It was a typical old, empty house. No ghosts, no slimy things crawling around in the shadows. Just damp, and rot, and rats.
There were a lot of rats. They were everywhere. You would walk into a room and they would scatter, squeezing through gaps in the walls, or under old husks of forgotten furniture. Some of them were big too. I saw one the size of a fully grown tomcat, somehow squeezing its huge soft body between two of the broken kitchen cabinets. I could tell Steve didn’t like the rats. You could see it on his face. Whenever he saw one, he would grimace and shy away, and I think I even heard him let out a small yelp when we found a nest in the corner of the bathroom, the blind newborns like plump, pink slugs.
I was leafing through some old newspapers from the 70’s, when Snoddy and Denton shuffled over to me. I didn’t like the look of their matching grins.
“We’re gonna play a prank on Steve. We need you to help out though,” Snoddy said, showing too many of his not quite white teeth.
I asked them to leave me out of it, and to go easy on Steve, since he showed us how to get into the building in the first place, but there was no swaying them. It seemed that Denton’s mean streak had somehow rubbed off on Snoddy, and I knew there was no point in trying to talk them out of it. I asked why they needed me anyway, why they couldn’t do it themselves.
They explained their plan and I began to laugh too. I laughed and went along with it, because that’s what I was expected to do. It’s hard to explain, but I felt somehow obliged to go along with it, despite my own misgivings. Even now I hate myself for it.
The plan was this: I would lure Steve upstairs to see some nonexistent but amazing discovery, and as he came down the hall, Denton and Snoddy would leap out of one of the bedrooms and give him a fright. I went downstairs to look for Steve, who was perched on the arm of a tired old sofa in the living room, scribbling furiously into his notebook. I felt a pang of guilt as I approached him.
“Steve, come check out what I found upstairs. You have to see it to believe it,” I said, sounding as excited as I could. Part of me hoped he would see it coming, that he might sense the trick and refuse. But as I said earlier, he and I had never had a problem, and since he had no reason to distrust me, he followed. I felt sick as I climbed the stairs, knowing what was coming, and that from then on poor Steve would group me in with all the other people who picked on him and made his life a living hell.
It makes me sad to write it down, and as I do, I can feel the tears welling up in my tired old eyes. I need to finish though, the sound in the walls is getting louder, and I suspect it won’t be long now.
I walked down the upstairs hallway, Steve just behind me. I was hoping he would see the funny side when it happened, but when it did, it caught me by surprise too, because they came not out of the bedroom at the end of the hallway as we had agreed, but out of the bathroom. I remember it well. Snoddy wild-eyed, Denton grinning like some kind of snarling animal. They carried a box between them and threw its contents at Steve, screaming loudly as they did so. What happened next took only seconds, but I recall it in horrific, slow detail.
I remember the contents of the box landing on Steve, and feeling disgusted at the sight of those fat, pink, newborn rats as they hit his chest and face. I remember Steve screaming and lurching back, too far back, and slamming into the old, rotten banister rail, which broke under his weight.
I remember how the look of joy on Snoddy and Denton’s faces transformed into a look of sick horror as they realized what was happening. I remember reaching out to Steve, trying to stop his fall, but he was wild-eyed and frightened, his hands flailing as the baby rats squealed in a freakish high register.
I remember Steve falling down the steps, rolling down on his back and landing in a heap on the floor, and then I remember the rats.
Streaming from the downstairs walls like a thick, moving carpet, they charged towards the distressed newborns in an effort to protect. I remember meeting Steve’s gaze from the upper landing, or at least imagine I do, and remember his betrayed, terrified expression as the rats covered him, biting and tearing, smothering him until he was no more than a screaming, thrashing mass of filthy black fur. I couldn’t say how many there were. Hundreds? Thousands? It’s impossible to say.
We could have saved him, but as we stared at one another there on the upstairs landing in the gloomy half light, we were in unspoken agreement to run. Down the steps, two at a time, and around the mass of rats as they continued to defend the newborns. I’m pretty sure Steve had stopped screaming by then. I remember seeing his notepad, still perched on the arm of the sofa where just five minutes earlier he had been minding his own business, gathering information for his website.
I would like to say we went for help and came back to rescue Steve, who suffered only minor injuries, and we all lived happily ever after. But that would be a lie. We didn’t go back, and we didn’t tell a soul about it. I feel sick about it even now, and curse myself for being such a coward. The three of us never spoke much again after that day. Perhaps through shared guilt, or shame, we drifted apart. Steve was reported missing a few days later. A huge deal was made of it in the news and the local press, and as the days passed, I was unable handle the guilt. So I made an anonymous call to the police, advising them to check out the old Fisherman house. They did, but Steve wasn’t there. They found his notepad, but no sign of him, or the rats by all accounts. I was tempted to go back there, to see for myself, and even went so far as to make it to the porch when I was seventeen. But the rats stopped me. Not physically, you understand. But as I stood there, I was sure I could hear them, moving around stealthily in the walls, the same sound I can hear now.
That was almost seventy years ago, and in that time, I don’t think I’ve slept a full night without the nightmares or the sickening guilt welling up inside. But it makes no difference. He’s back. He’s back and he’s brought the rats. Like a ghastly pied piper he has led them to me, to the walls of this cheap hotel room. The Fisherman house was demolished twenty years ago, and a multi-story car park stands where it once stood. I wonder where they went from there, Steve and the rats. Where did they hide until the time was right to come for us?
He got Snoddy a couple years ago. Snoddy had led an indistinct life, working minimum wage jobs, and developed a pretty serious drinking problem along the way. He never spoke of that day directly, as far as I know. But I’ve heard tell that when he was particularly out of it, he would mutter to himself about the sounds of the rats, and how he would never have enough traps for them all. He was found dead, with his eyes wide open and a look of sheer terror on his face. They said it was a heart attack, but I know better. I think Steve came for him, and when Snoddy saw what old Stevey-boy had become, how he looked after so many years festering in the dark— well, I think it was enough to stop his clock right then and there.
Dark Corners - Twelve Tales of Terror Page 6
