Beast In The Basement

by Jason Arnopp

She tightens her grip on the bat. Steps closer.

  "I said, that's irrelevant. Are you quite finished, with the abuse?"

  I try to read her expression. "You can't have kids, is that it?" Her eyes tell me this is true. "You're a barren spinster, aren't you! An ugly old witch who no-one could ever love."

  Sparks' lips pull back, baring her teeth. She raises the bat behind her, ready to swing it at my head.

  "Shut your filthy mouth," she yells. "I've spent days, fantasising about bashing your brains in."

  I can see in her eyes that she doesn't want to do this. But Jesus Christ, she's going to do it anyway.

  Couldn't stop if she wanted to. There's no way on Earth.

  I screw my eyes shut, sad that I don't fear death, but instead embrace the freedom it offers.

  Except... something changes. Staring past me, she's distracted by... what?

  Fast-moving footsteps rat-a-tat-tat across the floorboards, getting closer.

  "Hey!" cries Sparks. "Just wait a–"

  Someone appears by my side, pivots and karate-kicks her in her stomach.

  Sparks croaks and folds. She drops the bat, ending up on all fours, struggling to breathe.

  I look up and see Maddy, wide-eyed, confused, aghast at what she's done.

  CHAPTER TEN: THE G-WORD

  One day, when Jamie was five years old, we drove to Aldenham Country Park and had a picnic. We had a hamper and everything, which Sylvie had filled with goodness.

  Sometimes, in dreams, I'm allowed to remember that afternoon.

  I vividly recall Jamie at the edge of the clearing we'd adopted. Cackling, he repeatedly stomped a small foot down on something in the grass.

  "What's he got there?" Sylvie idly wondered, as she spread thick, soft cheese on a cracker.

  I got up and wandered over to see.

  "It's okay, I got it," Jamie told me as I drew near. "Look."

  He bent down to touch something in the grass, in order to pick it up. In a flash, he was recoiling, crying out in pain, his face all shocked, tears erupting.

  Jamie ran to me, gripping one of his hands with the other. "Ow, ow, ow."

  "What's wrong?" said Sylvie, standing up in the middle of the clearing.

  I examined Jamie's hand as he groaned. There was a red patch on one of his palms, with a tiny stinger poking out.

  Nestled in the grass below us was a dying, crushed bee.

  My son shook with pain as he stared up at me, plaintive. "Did I do bad?"

  With a sweeping sense of generational déjà vu, I told Jamie exactly what my own father had told me in the early Seventies, when I hit a stray dog with a stick on a grassy wasteland. After being bitten, I had asked him the same question on the way to hospital for a jab.

  "No," I told Jamie, with my father's sure, certain tone. "Of course you didn't. You're not to blame."

  The insect twitched its last, as I stomped down my boot.

  Later, at home, Sylvie and I argued about the whole thing, over and over, round and round. Apparently, I was teaching Jamie "all wrong" and "back to front."

  Twelve months later, we'd have much the same argument about PT Sparks.

  "Quick! Untie me. She's insane! She was going to kill me. You saw her."

  As Maddy undoes my binds, Sparks gesticulates wildly, eyes bulging, mouth pointlessly opening and closing.

  "Who is she?" says Maddy, her face flushed. "I just came to see if you were okay. I didn't explain myself very well on the porch. I was just worried that–"

  "No need to explain anything," I say, flexing bloodless fingers as Maddy loosens the rope. Then she's working on the ties around my waist and my feet. Freedom beckons.

  I see the baseball bat on the ground. Sparks eyes it too. She's still on all fours, recovering, a single strand of bloody drool connecting her mouth to the floorboards.

  With a sudden spurt of movement, Sparks scurries across the floor, grasping for the bat.

  Maddy deftly kicks it aside, then scoops it up from the ground.

  "What's wrong with you?" she asks of Sparks. "What's Steve ever done to you?"

  'Steve'. Oh, the web of lies I had to spin to make the mission work. All for nothing. Or is it?

  What if?

  I stagger over to the PC and open the e-mail program.

  I find Maurice's e-mail address, open a new message and attach my version of Jade Nexus And The Cathedral Of Screams to it. All the time, behind me, Maddy fires questions at a wheezing, heaving Sparks which, thankfully, she's physically unable to answer.

  The novel needs another draft, sure, but that's what proof readers are for, right? They can sort it out.

  Working fast, I type a quick note. "Dear Maurice, here it is. Early! Wonders will never cease. PT x".

  "What," comes a wheezing croak from the floor, "are you doing?"

  "Sending Maurice the novel," I tell her. "The right novel."

  "No..." she gasps. Sparks looks broken. I think she may be about to weep.

  I stand and walk back over to Maddy, my blood like rocket fuel. I feel righteous, victorious, as I prise the baseball bat from Maddy's grasp.

  Maddy finally sees the killer instinct lurking behind my eyes.

  "Look, what's this all about?" she says, less certain of the situation.

  I ignore her. I'm entirely focused on Sparks, who is now on her knees, trying to right herself, trying to breathe, eyes wet.

  "I've won," I tell her. "I've done right by Jamie and the children of this world. Jade Nexus lives..."

  Maddy's gaze burns into me. So many questions, swirling in that head.

  "And you," I tell Sparks, "you die."

  I couldn't stop, even if I wanted to.

  I raise the bat high, then power it down at her skull.

  I will pulp the brains which spawned Jade Nexus.

  Maddy lunges in and seizes my wrists, dramatically slowing the bat's descent and diverting it. Sparks yelps in pain as it crunches into her left shoulder, making her contort.

  Maddy's eyes are wide and fearful as I wrestle with her for control of the bat. She's as strong as I'd feared.

  "Don't know what you're doing, Steve, but that's not the answer!"

  The distant wail of police sirens, out there in the night.

  "Give me the bat," I tell Maddy. "They're coming! I need to finish this."

  "I won't let you," she insists, keeping hold of the weapon as we tug to and fro.

  "You make me sick," says Sparks from beneath us. "Everyone's to blame but you."

  I let go of the bat, my mouth suddenly parched. I look down at the broken, bloodied Beast, its fangs bared again as it stares up at me, so defiant, past caring.

  "Answer my question," she spits. "How did your son get out of the garden?"

  Oh God, no. Don't say it. Please don't say this.

  She says it. Pauline Tabitha Sparks says the very last word in the world that I wanted to hear. The g-word which I've managed to ban from my own head for three whole months.

  "Was there no gate?"

  A massive rush of blood to the brain, as the room pinwheels around me. I'm transported back to that day in Stanmore.

  That lazy day, when I walked out of the front gate. The gate with the latch which we'd specifically installed so that Jamie couldn't reach it when he was a toddler. The gate with the latch which he could actually reach these days and undo with a little effort, but was old enough to know not to.

  As I revved the engine to leave, mentally running through my shopping list, I noticed that the gate was ajar. Just by an inch or so.

  For a moment, I thought about getting back out of the car. I thought about closing the gate properly. I knew I should.

  One of those moments which seems so casually fleeting at the time, but in retrospect means everything in the whole wide world.

  It was a lazy day. And God help me, I surrendered to it. I looked over the fence into the garden and saw Jamie stretched out on the garden seat, still and content, engrossed in the book. I saw Sylv
ie nearby with the watering can.

  So I left the gate as it was and drove away.

  And I began to hum, abandoning all thoughts about the gate.

  These memories have remained abandoned, ever since. Banished. This is the first time I've allowed myself to recall the mistake. Because somewhere, deep down, in the seventh circle of my soul, I knew that if Jamie had been forced to stop for just a handful of seconds in order to open that latch, Sylvie would have caught up with him. Even if she hadn't, he would not have reached the road in time for the collision.

  Whenever Sylvie began to broach the subject of how our son got out of the garden so quickly – in fact, whenever she looked set to start any conversation about the whole thing – I would shoot her a look which might freeze a desert. In doing so, I drove the wedge even deeper between us.

  I became obsessed with the book and with PT Sparks. Without my consciously calculating it, they represented my salvation. If they were guilty, I'd be innocent.

  While Sylvie soldiered on with funeral arrangements, making phone calls, choosing wreaths, I read Jade Nexus And The Great Leveller, over and over, sweeping my mistake under its pages.

  I followed in my son's footsteps. I felt his pain when Mr Grumbles toppled screaming into the Gulf Of Chaos. Seeing red, I dove headlong into turbulent, vengeful oceans, convincing myself that Sparks was responsible for everything. I read her magazine interviews again and again. I stuck them on the wall then tore them down, screwed them up and threw them around, blind drunk, hollering like a maniac, as Sylvie cowered in other rooms. Any room which didn't contain me. She had quickly and painfully learned not to challenge me on this subject.

  One day, she finally made me sit down at a computer with her, as we scoured the internet for a holiday. It felt like a means of constructing a bridge between us again. Perhaps we could try to forget everything and escape. We found a villa holiday in Menorca which we both liked the look of. Then we started to book it.

  The online booking form had a default setting: two adults and one child.

  That was the end of the booking process. I shut the machine down and we never spoke of the idea again. Forgetting everything became forgotten.

  I had begun to construct the plan. The mission. The big payback. In my head, it all became so real. By whatever means necessary, I would find Sparks in her hermit-hole. I would use my compensation money to pay off informants and I would track her down, step by step, no matter how long it took. I would complete this mission and prevent Sparks from causing more death. Everything would be good and pure again. I couldn't save Jamie, but I could sure as hell save children like him.

  Even when Sylvie finally left home for good, it spurred me on. It felt like Sparks' evil influence on our lives had only intensified. She had even more for which to answer.

  Some people really do have incredible powers of denial.

  Hello reality. I ran with the wolves for so long, locked into this mission, but all I was doing was running away from you. Somewhere, deep down, I always knew you'd come calling.

  You always do.

  Pop.

  So there it goes, the biggest bubble of all. The big lie.

  The real beast in my basement.

  The police sirens draw closer. Pale blue lights flash on the study walls. Sparks sits on the floor, her back to a wall, now holding that kitchen knife by her side. Just in case.

  There's no longer any need for her to worry. I probably surrendered the baseball bat to Maddy a minute or so ago. I've been adrift in my own head, my hands covering my face, as the red mists parted. How I had loved that mist, which protected me from the agonising truth.

  I turn to Sparks and my mouth flaps vacantly. Words want to come out, but I'm unable to conjure up anything adequate. How could "Sorry" cover all this, even if I were to say it for eternity? "Sorry" won't begin to fix what I've done to this woman, with word and deed.

  Sparks stares coldly back. There's a tiny trace of the pity which once enraged me so, but mostly I think she wants me out of the house and into handcuffs. Can't say I blame her.

  "There," Maddy says, standing beside me, trying to smile through her immense anxiety. "I knew you were no killer. You haven't got it in you."

  I see no more reason to lie to her, about anything. I'm going to prison. She'll never see me again. For a second or two, I enjoy those incredible eyes of hers, knowing that they'll never look at me in the same way again.

  I drink them in like wine.

  "Maddy, I... I am a killer. I killed someone tonight, in the woods." The rest of the confession exits me in one big breath: "He was hanging around your house looking to rob it and I lost my mind and I killed him with my bare hands then put him in the river."

  As I expected, shock creeps across Maddy's face, taking control.

  "I'm sorry," I tell her. "You never really knew me."

  But Maddy isn't listening any more. Because that shock has become something else. It has toppled into panic. It has become panic, horror and undiluted dread, which she's trying so hard to rein in. She trembles, speaking quietly and quickly.

  "You're kidding, right? Tell me you're kidding."

  "No, he's definitely dead."

  Those eyes glass up, shining. Her voice rises in pitch. "Who's dead? Who did you kill?"

  "A kid with long hair. Like I said, he was hanging around your place with a backpack and..."

  These words trail off, the rest of them stillborn in my head, as Maddy's face crumples and her world implodes.

  All of a sudden, she's screaming.

  Oh my God, she sounds just like Sylvie, that day.

  The kind of scream that only a mother could unleash.

  Maddy's words tonight on the porch return to rattle my brain like a jackhammer. This time, I pay most attention to the second part.

  "Divorced, with a kid."

  Maddy frenziedly swings the bat at me. I clumsily step backwards and it whooshes past my face.

  Her son had paid her a visit. He was only leaving. She didn't want us to have sex on the porch in case he came back. Oh no. Oh dear God, no.

  Livid, possessed, destroyed, Maddy jerks the bat again. This time it hammers into my left collar bone, cracking it, unleashing a titanic wave of pain. Fighting the intensity of that damage, stuttering, flailing back, throat like sandpaper, I try to tell Maddy her son was a thief, as if that will undo everything, but it's all lost in this maelstrom, in the blazing heat of the furnace which I myself stoked.

  The saddest thing of all? The fact that even I don't know how she feels. My son died in an accident. He wasn't beaten to death on a dirty riverbank, pleading for his life.

  How did I not only become what I despised, but worse? I became what I'd projected onto Pauline Tabitha Sparks, then leapt straight through that projector screen into the Devil's waiting arms.

  Maddy alternates between helpless retches and maniacally screeched words which I can no longer understand. Sparks is by her side now, her face loaded with malice, as if this is finally the excuse, the tipping point that she needed. She lashes out with the knife, plunging it deep through my right arm, white hot, sawing through skin, sinew and muscle, splitting bone.

  I shove Sparks away with my other arm and the knife comes out dripping.

  Maddy's bat hammers into my right eye, shattering the socket, making the kaleidoscope return, fiercer and more disorientating than ever.

  Vision starts to break down, agony swamps me. Police sirens blare.

  Sparks swings the blade at me in a wide arc, cutting right through something in my throat. Hot blood gushes down my chest and my breath becomes tattered, wet, stop-start.

  I turn and run. Not for the door, but for the tall window.

  I dash towards it as fast as I can, and yet everything seems to slow right down to a crawl.

  The impact feels like an explosion as the pane gives way, a thousand razor-sharp edges ripping my flesh.

  Slowly, so very slowly, I burst out into the cold night air.

 
For one frozen moment, as if gravity is happy to bide its time, bloodied glass-shards hang all around me like an airborne art installation, underlit by flashing blue.

  I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that for the first time in three months I'm doing the right thing.

  Hold on, son. Be there in a minute.

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR SPARKS ABDUCTED BY MURDEROUS FAN

  PT Sparks, the best-selling children's author, is at the centre of an extraordinary murder investigation, after an obsessive killer invaded her country home and ended up dead.

  Sparks was held captive for five days by 46-year-old Robert Coulter. It is alleged that Sparks freed herself and was again brutally attacked by her captor, only to successfully fight back with the aid of an as-yet-unnamed local woman, whose own son is believed to have been murdered by Coulter.

  Coulter harboured a grudge against Sparks and specifically her Jade Nexus novels, following the accidental death of his six-year-old son Jamie in June. Blaming Sparks' work for the accident, Coulter spoke to this newspaper in July, insisting that Sparks' books should be banned. "She is grossly irresponsible," he told us, "and directly responsible for the death of my son. I will not rest until she is brought to justice." Coulter went on to find strong support from many parental organisations, but clearly decided to seek his own twisted justice.

  "This is a truly harrowing, disturbing and tragic case," Police Commissioner Thomas Stone told a press conference last night. "A celebrated author, who prizes her privacy so highly, was assaulted and abducted in her own home. She was held captive in a filthy basement room for days and allowed only the most basic rations while Robert Coulter pursued his own misguided agenda. We currently do not know why Coulter murdered a local teenager, whose body has been recovered from a nearby river, but our investigations are ongoing. As a result, I cannot say too much about the charges, if any, that Ms Sparks or the local woman will face, but Ms Sparks' lawyer is now representing them both. He has indicated that they will be pleading self-defence."

  Last night, we managed to track down Robert Coulter's estranged wife Sylvie Gardner. She has lived in Edinburgh for the last two months, since abandoning the North London home she shared with Coulter in July. An unnamed male "friend" informed us, on the front doorstep, that Mrs Coulter was "too upset" to speak to us.