Past Darkness

by Sam Millar

  ‘If that means ugly, angry and smelly, then yes. He’s screaming through the door right now that he’s gonna rape and then kill me. I’m scared, Karl. He means it. He’s ramming the door right now. Listen.’

  Lipstick must have been holding her mobile near the door. In the background, Karl could here screaming and loud thumps.

  ‘Room number?’ Karl quickly swung his legs out of bed, parking his impressive bulk on the edge.

  ‘Fourteen.’

  ‘Has this creep got a name?’

  ‘Calls himself Graham Butler. He’s from London, I think. He…he wanted me to do things I hadn’t agreed to. He wouldn’t pay me for what I’d already done for him, so I took his watch in exchange.’

  ‘I’ll be there within five minutes. Hold tight.’

  ‘Karl?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look tough.’

  ‘At four in the morning and wearing pyjamas?’

  Naomi waited until Karl killed the connection.

  ‘What’s she got herself into, now?’

  ‘Something I hope to get her out of before I get too deep into.’ He quickly put on a pair of socks, while searching for his Samuel Windsor loafers.

  ‘You can’t keep putting yourself in danger, every time she calls.’

  ‘Tell me how to say no to the person who saved my life, and I’ll do it.’

  ‘Get off the guilt trip. You’ve repaid her a hundred times. She’s ripping the arse clean out of it.’

  ‘I know she is, and it’s my arse taking the hammering, along with my haemorrhoids. Hopefully, I shouldn’t be too long. Go back to sleep.’

  He gave Naomi a quick kiss, and headed out the door.

  It was raining when Karl arrived outside the Europa four minutes later. Residing a few streets away helped. The filthy rain came down in thick, leach-shaped drops, making a bizarre echoing sound as it hit the top of parked cars. He cursed under his breath for not bringing an umbrella.

  He parked his car in a side street, and hurriedly headed towards the front entrance of the hotel.

  Bombed over thirty times, the grand old building had earned the unenviable sobriquet of the most bombed hotel in Europe. Or as Belfastians flippantly referred to it: that blasted hotel.

  The area was usually buzzing with tourists, but at this time of morning, foot traffic had wisely disappeared, replaced by parcels of nomadic homeless people. Outside the hotel, a fleet of black taxis resembling giant metallic beetles lurked in the shadows, their suspicious-looking drivers assembled like Alfred Hitchcock villains waiting to carry out villainous deeds.

  Karl passed through the revolving doors and into the modern and bright reception of the grand foyer. He was immediately eyed by a suspicious young concierge, who looked as if he had yet to tackle his first razor.

  ‘May I help you, sir?’ the young man said disdainfully, looking a dishevelled and drenched Karl up and down.

  ‘No, you’re okay, son. Just heading up to see my old school mate Graham – Graham Butler – up in room fourteen.’ Karl made a movement towards the lift, but was quickly blocked by the pimply adolescent.

  ‘You can’t go up until I call Mister Butler on the phone. That’s hotel policy.’

  Karl glanced at the young man’s name tab: Raymond.

  ‘Hotel policy, Raymond? Is it hotel policy to turn a blind eye to janes and johns?’

  Raymond’s face reddened. ‘I…I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘No? I never forget a name. A friend of mine – who just happens to be in trouble right now, as I waste time speaking to you – mentioned a Raymond to me. Likes to have his palms greased for turning a blind eye to illegal nocturnal manoeuvres of the sexual kind.’

  ‘I…I…don’t know what that means.’

  ‘No? Okay then, we’ll discuss the birds and bees later. Right now, be a good boy and hold that pose. I’ll be back down in less than five minutes. No one will be any the wiser. And here, this is for forgetting.’ Karl slipped a tenner into Raymond’s waistcoat pocket. ‘Oh, if I find out you phoned room fourteen, and ruined my surprise, it’ll not be your palm I’ll be greasing, when I return.’

  Raymond, now looking a little faint, moved smoothly out of the way.

  Ten seconds later, Karl stepped out of the elevator and immediately took stock outside room fourteen. A muffled but angry voice could be heard as he levelled his ear against the door.

  Standing back a good few inches, Karl studied the door. Thought about trying to kick the formidable-looking structure in. Quickly realised the implausibility of such a ridiculous act. He calmly rang the bell instead.

  ‘Who the fuck is it?’ a harsh male voice shouted.

  ‘Room service, sir.’

  The door snapped open, revealing a nude, sweating man, covered in tattoos. He was stocky, gym-manufactured, fake-bronzed and had ridiculously white teeth. A big bastard of a brute, he stood six large and six small, and was in his late forties auditioning for thirty. His hands were enormous – unlike his diminutive cock. All pubic hairs had been shaven in his private area. Karl shuddered as an image of Kojak sucking his famous lollipop violated his mind.

  ‘What the fuck’re you on about, dickhead? I didn’t ask for any fucking room service,’ Butler snarled, trying to sound like a tough guy in a B-movie.

  ‘Facial masseur, monsieur,’ replied the genuine article of tough guy personified.

  ‘I don’t need a facial anything–’

  Karl’s uppercut caught Butler under the jaw so hard, the thug staggered backwards in mid-ride over a sofa, before speedily spreading out in crucifixion formation on the floor, moaning.

  ‘You do now, scumbag.’ Quickly walking over to the bathroom, Karl banged on the door. ‘Lipstick! Open the hell up! It’s me. Karl.’

  The door opened a fraction, revealing a young, matchstick-thin girl, in her early twenties. Her features were a prescription of heroin-addiction misery. She was nude, awkwardly trying to cover up her private parts.

  ‘Is…is he gone, Karl?’

  ‘Let’s just say he’ll be out for a while – what…? What the hell happened to your face?’

  Lipstick’s eyes were turning an angry purple, partially closing. A web of bloody drool dripped from her busted mouth.

  ‘He got angry because I wouldn’t do anal for him. You… you know I only do anal for people I like, Karl, don’t you?’

  Karl made an uncomfortable face. ‘I wouldn’t let Naomi hear you say it like that. She might get the wrong impression. Hurry up and get dressed. I’m taking you to the Mater.’

  ‘But…I don’t need to go to the hospital. It’s just a few smacks in the gob and–’

  ‘Do as I say. I’m not in the mood for negotiations.’ Karl turned, walked over to the moaning Butler. ‘Hard man, eh? Like picking on defenceless little girls?’

  Blood was smearing Butler’s mouth. It looked vulgar. Like the Joker in Batman.

  Smirking, Butler looked up at Karl. ‘You…you don’t know…who you’re fucking with, you and your little whore.’

  Karl smiled like a politician on voting day. ‘They say you should never kick a man when he’s down, but in your case I say, name me a better time?’ Karl kicked the smirking face twice, before placing his formidable weight down on Butler’s fully exposed bare balls.

  ‘Fuckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk!’ Butler screamed, his hands trying desperately to pull Karl’s foot away.

  ‘You don’t look so hard now, not where I’m standing, dickhead.’ Karl applied more pressure.

  ‘Fuckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk!’ Butler’s face knotted inwards with pain. He vomited a greenish grey lumpy substance.

  ‘That’s enough, Karl!’ Lipstick shouted from the bathroom, hurriedly getting dressed. ‘No need to hurt him any more.’

  But the rage and blood-rush was with Karl, and he continued ball-pressing.

  ‘I said that’s enough!’ Lipstick ran up to Karl, pulling him away.

  ‘
You’re too forgiving, kiddo. How many times have I told you to toughen up?’

  ‘Toughen up like you, the biggest softy on the planet? Besides, I got this.’ Lipstick dangled an expensive-looking watch in front of Karl’s eyes, almost as if trying to hypnotize him. ‘He’ll hate losing this more than any kicking you can give him. He’s that sort of bastard.’

  Fatigued, Karl sat down on the overturned sofa, and let out a sigh.

  ‘I’m getting way too old for this kind of shit, kiddo, and you’re way too young to be doing the kind of shit you do.’

  Lipstick put her emaciated arms around Karl’s neck and kissed his cheek, leaving her trademark shimmering on his skin. ‘I love you, Karl Kane. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘The story of my life. Everyone loves me when they’re in trouble.’

  ‘Not like me, they don’t,’ Lipstick said, with such earnest intensity it was heart-breaking to hear. ‘I love you.’

  Karl quickly untangled her arms from his neck, and began pushing himself up wearily from the sofa, like an old heavyweight boxer using the ropes for balance.

  ‘C’mon, kiddo. Let’s get the hell out of here. We’re heading to the Mater.’

  ‘Do…do we really need to go, Karl? They might start asking awkward questions and–’ Uncontrollably, Lipstick started giggling.

  ‘What the hell’s so funny?’

  Lipstick pointed at Karl’s legs. ‘You really are wearing pyjamas.’

  Chapter Three

  Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you life as your victor’s crown.

  Revelation, 12:17

  The inside of the large house stank of the festering human leakage of urine and excrement, coupled with dampness and the particular flavour of coldness associated with loneliness and despair.

  Death, also, in the godless gloom.

  Murder, specifically.

  Oh such a horrible murder.

  The master bedroom remained practically bare, except for the years of yesterday strewn everywhere: old newspapers browning and curling like autumn leaves, and once-happy clothes turned to sad-rags of moth-fodder.

  Practically bare, except for the thin, diseased mattress in the middle of the floor, and the young girl’s body curved into a foetal position atop the bedding. Her body resembled a straw doll left out in the evening rain for too long. She was adorned in a long, flowery dress from an era long forgotten.

  At the entrance to the room, Scarman stood like a medieval giant, naked, muscles framed powerfully in the door. His face was arrogantly chiselled like a great, pale wolf. His eyes were those of the departed, and he focused those dead eyes on the girl.

  In the claustrophic darkness, the girl’s skin gleamed like a ghostly beacon, more an apparition than something tangible and breathing.

  Stalking silently to the mattress, he knelt down and brought his nose close to her, inhaling deeply. A cloying onion odour of unwashed skin filled his nostrils. Coupled with that smell, which never failed to arouse the darkness in him: the smell of the young.

  For such a thin little thing, she had struggled gallantly, punching and kicking. But now she was silent and still. As still as fallen snow in the breaking of winter’s twilight; so still, he thought she could be dead.

  But she wasn’t dead. Not yet. Not until he was ready. He needed one more to accompany her on the journey ahead. He had been unsuccessful up to now in finding the other special one. The next couple of days, he hoped, would be more fruitful.

  He left the room as silently as he had entered, and only then did the girl abandon her pretence, opening the curtains of her eyelids slowly.

  Her gaze was filled with caution and weariness, but also something else; something not quite right, carried deep down inside her: a sinister darkening slowly awakening, revealing a provenance of past horrors. Perhaps a warning of terrible things to come; terrible things about to be unleashed into the murderous madness being prepared for those about to die, or those about to kill.

  Chapter Four

  Act well your part, there all the honour lies.

  Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man

  ‘Look at the state of you,’ Naomi said, placing a steaming cup of coffee barely within arm’s reach of the sofa Karl was stretched out on. ‘What time did you get in at this morning?’

  ‘About an hour ago,’ Karl replied, yawning while supinely reaching for the coffee. Black circles were developing under his bloodshot eyes.

  ‘You’ll choke on that if you don’t sit up right.’

  ‘Wishful thinking on your behalf.’

  ‘Couldn’t you’ve at least phoned, let me know where you were? I was worried sick when you didn’t come back.’

  ‘Is that what’s biting the arse off you? You know I left in a hurry. I forgot the damn mobile. Okay? Now, can I drink this coffee before it gets cold?’

  Naomi ignored him. Sat down at the breakfast table. Clicked on the digital radio. Leafing through the morning newspaper, she stopped at a small article on page two.

  ‘They still haven’t found that wee girl, Tara Kennedy. Remember? The one who ran away from that foster home, Blackmore, over in south Belfast. It’s been almost three months since she went missing.’

  ‘That’s why I don’t read those rags anymore. Nothing but bad news in them. And you wonder why people living in Belfast are depressed? If its not tablets, it’s tabloids they’re on.’

  Naomi stared sadly at Tara’s photo. ‘Such a lovely wee thing. It says she’s fifteen, but she barely looks ten in this picture.’

  ‘Can you please keep all that grim news to yourself? I don’t want to hear about it.’

  ‘Why are you being so ill-tempered this morning? Are your haemorrhoids acting up?’

  ‘No, that’s not the bloody reason. If you really must know, I’ve had very little sleep. Been waiting in a sardine-filled emergency room with Lipstick, up in the Mater.’

  ‘Lipstick in the hospital…?’ Naomi immediately placed the newspaper back down on the table, looking troubled. ‘For heaven’s sake, why didn’t you say something earlier?’

  ‘You didn’t give me time, did you, with your interrogation?’

  ‘I just thought she was looking for some money from you, and you didn’t want me to know.’

  ‘That’s your suspicious mind working.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘A steroid-swollen scumbag beat the crap out of her, over in the Europa. That’s what the phone call was about this morning.’

  Naomi looked horrified. ‘God the night, Karl. Is she okay?’

  ‘Her face looks terrible, but the doctor said she should be fine in a couple of weeks. She’s lucky not to be scarred for life.’

  ‘What about the lowlife who did it? Did the police arrest him?’

  ‘How the hell could the cops be brought into it, knowing Lipstick’s form? I even had to make up a cock-and-bull story to the nurse in the Mater, who probably thought I was the one who did it. Sitting in the waiting room soaked to the skin and wearing pyjamas didn’t help either. The looks I was getting, as if I was some sort of perv.’

  ‘The thug got away, then?’

  Karl made a grunting sound. ‘Let’s just say I had a ball of a time with what little balls he had to boast about. By now, though, they’ve swollen to the size of Space Hoppers. He’ll be pissing glass for weeks, hopefully. If it hadn’t been for Lipstick appealing to my gentler nature, he would’ve had more broken bones than Evel Knievel.’

  Naomi’s forehead furrowed. ‘Where’s Lipstick now?’

  ‘In the spare bedroom.’

  ‘In the…? Damn you, Karl.’ Naomi stood angrily. ‘Couldn’t you have told me this before now?’

  ‘Don’t start all that again. Anyway, taking her back to her place wasn’t an option, in case the scumbucket went looking for her. The doctor in the hosp
ital administered a couple of heavy-duty painkillers. The last time I looked in, they were doing the trick. She was sleeping soundlessly.’

  ‘I’ll check on her,’ Naomi said, walking quickly towards the landing.

  ‘I’m going to get a wash and shave before we open up for business.’ Karl waited a few seconds before easing his tired body off the sofa. He took a deep gulp of coffee, letting the dark oily liquid spark his battery. ‘I just hope this day gets a lot better than this morning started.’

  Little did he know, things where about to get a lot worse. A hell of a lot worse.

  Chapter Five

  You know, when you’re little, you have more endurance than God is ever to grant you again.

  Children are man at his strongest. They abide.

  Rachel Cooper, The Night of the Hunter

  Scarman watched covertly from the house’s back entry. Waiting with the patience of an apostle attending vespers. Cloaked appositely in the cowl of a monk, a nylon stocking pulled tightly over his face. He glanced at his luminous watch. Just gone four in the morning.

  Those in the house had drunk their way through the evening with friends, screaming and cursing at each other like a bunch of wild apes, the jungle booze slithering down their monkey necks.

  Earlier, cruising by in his van, feigning a lack of interest, he had witnessed an adult handing one of the children some sort of alcoholic beverage. The adult sniggered as the child made a disgusted face, before quickly puking out the liquid. A large dog quickly lapped up the vomit.

  A fierce wind was blowing dustbins and their contents all about the small space where he stood. The dispersed bin lids rattled, clanking against walls and back doors, blending into a wintery cacophony. From an upturned bin, the carcass of a dead rat spilled out next to his boots. The rodent was shrouded in a shitty pair of knickers, shrivelled up like a piece of papier mâché. He kicked it down the alley, muttering something incoherent under his breath.

  For the last thirty minutes or so, the vomit-eating dog Scarman had seen earlier in the day, was guarding the yard, snarling at him lurking in the darkness.