by David Haynes
He walked into the lounge and checked the windows again. He felt foolish but he knew he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on writing if he thought there was a chance the house was insecure.
Stan followed Ben into the kitchen. As soon as he had let the dog go out, he closed the door and locked it immediately. Stan would let him know when he was ready to come back in.
With the light on, he was blind to the fields outside. If someone was out there watching him, he wouldn’t have a clue. But the alternative was turning the lights off and that was definitely not an option.
He pulled a pepperoni pizza out of the freezer and pushed it into the oven. He didn’t especially want to eat it or anything else, but his stomach felt empty and was starting to aggressively complain about the lack of food in it.
Stan had only been outside for half of his usual time but his whines at the back door were difficult to ignore, so Ben let him in. When the pizza was ready he took it into the study and sat down at his desk. The room wasn’t really large enough to accommodate Stan too, but he wouldn’t be left out and wedged himself in the corner. He looked uncomfortable as he hunkered down and closed his eyes.
Ben stared at the manuscript left by the clown for a long time before he could stand to pick it up. The pages seemed heavier than before. It was as if there was extra weight to the words, like they were written in blood instead of ink.
He rolled them up and dropped them into the waste basket. They weren’t the words of killer, just a fan. A fan with some pretty good ideas but just a fan. Seeing what had happened to Jim had turned him upside down and shaken his guts around, but it was totally separate from what was happening here. If he had mentioned it to Brady, she probably would have laughed at him. He almost laughed himself, at his stupidity. Someone who did what they did to Jim wouldn’t break into someone else’s house on two occasions, just to bring them a half-written story? More likely they would have slaughtered him as he slept.
He stared at the manuscript and smiled. The writing was rudimentary at best, but filled with a creativity that sparked his own back into life. For that he was thankful, but the door was closed and locked now and he didn’t need their help any more. He had never had a stalker but knew plenty of others did. If things got worse or changed direction, he would call the police and report it. He looked at the business card DS Brady gave him. Maybe she might pay another visit?
He smiled again and opened the word processor software on his computer. And if she did come back, he would have a shave and tidy himself up a bit. He tried his best to keep his eyes away from the tired reflection looking back at him from the small window to the side of his head.
For the first time in a very long time, he felt excited as he typed the title of his new book at the top of the page. He read it aloud: “Boo!”
This was going to put him back on the map.
At just after one in the morning, Ben saved the file and powered down. Not in a very long time had his creative juices flowed quite so freely. The tips of his fingers stung with the power and speed at which he typed. It was a wonderful feeling.
He probably could have gone on all night. In the past, he put in a lot of all-night sessions. But his body and head throbbed with the remnants of the flu. Without moving for the last four hours, his throat was on fire, not to mention the pain in his bladder. His body was telling him enough was enough. For now.
He arched his back and groaned as the muscles sighed with relief.
“Wee?” he asked Stan, who had only moved once during the same amount of time.
The dog sneezed and jumped to his feet in an untidy whirl of legs.
“Come on, then it’s time for bed.”
Stan followed him to the back door and shot out into the unfathomable darkness.
Ben had been writing long enough and was competent enough to know that what he had just typed was about as good a first draft as he was capable of. God, it felt good. He hadn’t had to think very hard to bring the images of Crawley’s blood-spattered caravan back to life, but surprisingly it hadn’t made him feel sick. Instead it released a stream of creativity and energy which had overridden everything else. When he was flowing like that, all other concerns drifted away.
With a few tweaks and some sharp dialogue, he managed to put Sparkles back into his old life, back into his old diabolical ways. It felt right to do it. It was almost as if what he had seen this morning had been created just for him, just to inspire him to write again. He almost felt bad for taking inspiration from Crawley’s death, but fact and fiction were always comfortable bedfellows for a writer.
He called the dog who burst inside like his arse was on fire. His coat was wet from a steady fall of rain. Ben dried him on an old towel hanging by the back door. Stan licked his face and chattered his teeth to show his appreciation. They both walked into the hall together but after Ben touched the light switch, he went back to the kitchen and pulled the carving knife from the wooden block. The adrenalin shot from writing had taken care of some of the anxiety caused by Crawley’s murder this morning, but there was no harm in taking some protection to bed.
Stan stretched out beside him on the duvet, making contented grunts as he fell asleep. Ben knew that tonight he would also fall asleep quickly. When he wasn’t writing, his mind was restless and agitated because it wasn’t being exercised. It was the opposite sensation when he was writing: calm, relaxed and satisfied. He rolled over and put his hand on the cold steel of the knife’s handle on the bedside table. Within a few seconds he was asleep.
*
It was a slow rise to the surface but once he got there, he didn’t understand why he was awake. The room was completely dark so he knew it wasn’t his body-clock telling him it was time to wake up. He rubbed his face, felt the bristles scrape across his skin. He was aware that Stan had shifted and was looking up at him.
He checked his phone, nudging the knife. Both fell to the floor with a dull thud but the phone lit up and told him it was nearly three-thirty. Way too early to wake up. He rolled back over, touched Stan’s head and closed his eyes.
Thump, thump.
His eyes flicked open and his senses clicked into gear. What was that? He waited and listened, holding his breath, trying not to move.
Thump, thump, thump.
Was it in the room? Was it in the room?
No, it was too far away, downstairs somewhere. He took his hand off the dog. Stan was rigid, and in the gloom he could see he was staring at the door. He put his hand out to grab the knife but felt nothing except for the cover of his paperback. Where was it? A beacon of panic sparked up in the back of his head. If he let it burn for too long, it would flash through his brain and tie him to the bed in a useless heap.
The knife, he had to have the knife.
It was on the floor. He had knocked it off the table a few seconds ago. Stan made a long whine which turned into a growl at the end. The bed shook as the dog trembled.
Thump.
That was it. There was definitely someone in the house. How the hell had they got in? The windows were locked as were the doors.
The back door. Had he locked it again after Stan came in? He couldn’t remember not doing it. But he couldn’t remember doing it either. He reached down and grabbed the knife. There were some options. He could play dead and pretend to be asleep. That had worked in the past. Or he could grow a pair, go downstairs and... and what? Stab the intruder? He hadn’t had a fight in thirty years, so if anyone was going to end up on the losing side it was him.
Thump, thump.
Stan growled and stood up on the bed. They were on the stairs. Whatever he was going to do, he had to do it now.
He rolled off the bed and patted his leg. The dog jumped down and Ben winced. Stan wasn’t light on his feet and the noise was deafening. They moved quickly across the carpet and into the en-suite. He locked the door behind them and pushed his back against the door. His heart was bouncing around in his chest at a thousand miles an hour. The sound echoed with
a creepy thud.
Thump, thump, thump, thump.
They weren’t on the stairs now, they were at the top. Waiting. Waiting. What were they waiting for?
And then there was the sound of the door scraping across the fibres of the carpet. Opening the door and coming into the bedroom. He clutched the knife in both of his hands and looked down at the dog. Please don’t make a sound, he thought.
He could hear footsteps now. Soft and deliberate across the carpet as if tip-toeing, trying not to be heard.
“I am being quiet!” a whispered voice hissed.
Who were they talking to? Was there more than one of them? It didn’t sound like there were two sets of feet on the carpet.
The voice hissed again. “He isn’t here.”
There were definitely two of them. Either that or someone was talking to himself. Ben’s phone was on the floor beside the bed. Why hadn’t he picked it up as well as the knife? He could be in here calling the police. Should he shout something? Something threatening?
He opened his mouth but Stan beat him to it and growled. If Ben didn’t know better, he might have thought Stan was a ferocious beast. He had never heard anything like it from the dog before. Ben winced. There was no hiding where he was now.
Silence followed. It was the sort of silence that was truly deafening. Each beat of his heart seemed to reverberate up through his flesh and make an almighty boom. But there was nothing from the other side of the door.
He knows I’m in here and I know he’s out there, thought Ben. He dropped his hand and turned the lock. Enough was enough, he would rush out screaming and shouting and start swinging. He looked down at Stan and the dog curled his lips back in a silent snarl. He swallowed twice. Now he had made the decision, all the moisture in his body had retreated somewhere. Just like his balls.
Time for us both to grow a pair, he thought, grabbing the handle. He turned it quickly and rushed into the bedroom roaring and swinging the knife wildly about.
After a few wild seconds he could see the room was empty, completely empty. He turned around again holding the knife out in front and jerking his head from side to side, but he was the only person in there.
The bedroom door was open though, and the darkness beyond was absolute. He could close the door, barricade himself in and call the police, that would be easy. That would be safe.
He looked down at Stan who was beside him. “You up for this?”
The dog whined and leaned on him. “No, neither am I but we’re going anyway.”
He ran forward. “I’ve got a knife!” he screamed. He hoped his voice was more threatening than it sounded to him.
As soon as he left the bedroom he felt vulnerable, and whatever false courage had been burning in his chest vaporised. He stopped at the top of the stairs, looked down and listened. Had they gone? The house was quiet apart from his and Stan’s ragged breaths.
“Boo!” a whispered voice came from behind him.
He jumped and let out a grunt. As he whipped around, his stomach tried to force its way up his throat and into his mouth. He tried to swallow it back but there was no moisture. He heard the dog skidding across the carpet as he tried to run away.
Ben completed the turn and stepped back. He tried to raise the knife but his foot slipped off the top step and then he was falling backwards, down into the void, and looking into the face of his creation. Sparkles was watching him fall. On his face was the most god-awful sneer he had ever seen. It ran almost from ear to ear and it was sickening.
Then there was an intense pain on the back of his head and blackness.
15
It was light when Ben came to. He didn’t open his eyes but the morning filtered through his eyelids in a grey haze. How long had he been out? Two, three, four hours? There was no way of telling but at this time of year it didn’t get properly light until after seven. That would make it at least four hours. That was plenty of time for someone to cut off his face and chop him into little bits.
But he was alive. For some reason, he was alive.
He wriggled his arms and legs. There was soreness but nothing like the pain he’d experienced when he broke his arm three years ago. That was a pain he would never forget. The worst of it was at the back of his head. It felt like a bomb had gone off and blown part of his skull away. He gingerly lifted his head and touched his hair. There were no sticky clumps where blood had been spilled but it throbbed all the same.
He lowered his hand and stretched his arms out to the side. His fingers touched something and he knew immediately what it was. Paper. A ream of paper. Without looking, he knew there were words typed on it. Black words in neat little rows all strung together like the legs of dead spiders. That was why he was still alive. So he could write new stories using a real-life Sparkles as inspiration. A true collaboration.
He rolled over, away from the papers, and retched. “Stan!” he croaked. There wasn’t the usual scrabbling of paws on the carpet in response. There was nothing. His heart sank. If anyone had hurt him, if anyone had laid a finger on the dog...
There was a whine and the sound of teeth chattering. Ben finally opened his eyes and where Sparkles had been when his eyes were last open was Stan’s friendly face.
“Come on.” He patted the carpet next to him and sat up. Stan whimpered and came slowly down the stairs. Stan had spent nearly all of his life as a working dog, as someone’s asset at the racetrack. He didn’t do the things that other dogs did, he didn’t know how. He was ambivalent about most things and he certainly didn’t know how to be brave or fierce. But as he lowered himself to the floor beside Ben and dug one of his elbows into a sore spot, Ben realised Stan was his best friend. He loved the dog more than any person alive and the dog was probably the only living thing that loved him. If he spent much time thinking about it, he might cry again. It was pretty sad.
*
Ben watched from the spare room as the police car come down the track toward the house. He held a damp tea-towel to the back of his head. The room had once served as Rachel’s gym, but she took the equipment when she left and now it was an empty box. There were three others just like it. The house had felt cold and lonely for a long time but never more so than right at that very moment. He knew he should have moved a while ago but now the need was urgent.
So eager had he been to get back on top, to write another bestseller, that he had lost his way completely. Clutching at straws, someone else’s straws, pretending that it was his own writing and even going so far as to risk his own life by talking himself into some irrational theory. He was a ridiculous man.
He was embarrassed by his own actions, by the way he had treated Rachel. And for god’s sake, he had slept with a girl young enough to be his daughter, who had taken the piss out of him and posted his arse all over the internet. He was an embarrassing idiot, too caught up in his own importance to do the right thing. The right thing was to have phoned the police days ago. The right thing would be to crawl into the deepest hole and stay there until his bones crumbled into the earth.
He hadn’t asked for Brady by name when he made the report to the operator. He simply reported a burglary. He knew once he started to tell the officers what had happened then she would be notified, but was too ashamed to tell her what he should have said yesterday.
He let the two officers in and told them what had happened. One of them, the younger one, was on his radio immediately.
“We’re just calling through for some assistance. For a specialist to come and speak to you.”
Ben nodded. “Detective Sergeant Brady?” he asked.
The officer looked shocked. “You know DS Brady, Mr Night?”
Ben walked toward the kitchen. “We met yesterday. I’ll put the kettle on.” There it was, he would have to tell her everything now. All of it. It wasn’t going to be his proudest moment.
*
Within twenty minutes, Brady was standing in his kitchen with two other detectives.
“Have you called for a p
aramedic?” she asked one of the uniformed officers. His face reddened in reply.
“I don’t need one.” Ben lowered the towel and looked at the officer. “I’m okay.”
Brady pushed the point. “We’ll get someone here to give you the once-over. You were unconscious for a while, Mr Night.”
Ben just nodded. He didn’t have the energy to argue.
“The officers have already told me what you said to them but I’d like you to repeat it to me, please.” Brady sat across the table from him while the other two detectives wandered off. She opened her book and took a pen from the inside her jacket.
Ben took a deep breath and recounted the events of last night. He was embarrassed about hiding in the toilet but she showed no discernible response to his narrative. She asked him to describe the clown’s face several times, going over minor details again.
Was she trying to trip him up?
Finally she stood up and smiled. “We’ll keep looking around and if you remember anything else, give me a shout. I’ll be here for a while yet.” Her smile made him want to smile back but he couldn’t.
He grimaced as she turned away. “There is one other thing,” he said quietly.
She turned around. “Yes?”
“Sparkles has been here before.” He paused and then added, “Twice before.”
“Sparkles?” Brady asked.
“Sparkles, Bingo, whatever you want to call him. It’s all the same. Newman based his creation on my creation. They have the same face.”
For a split-second, her facade slipped and Ben saw something akin to shock pass over her face. Then the control was back again. She sat down and opened her book.
