A Home by the Sea (A Supernatural Suspense Novel)

by Saunders, Craig

  Franklin fell to the floor. Blood poured from the wound in his neck. His eyes rolled in his head, then Paul could see the whites as Franklin passed into unconsciousness.

  Paul could feel his own life leaving him. His blood poured in torrents from his wounds. In minutes, maybe, he would be unconscious, like Franklin.

  He didn’t have time to kill his brother, and he couldn’t, even now. Couldn’t bring himself to finish it.

  But someone else could finish it. And he could still save Irene and his unborn children...those beautiful children he’d never know. But he’d give his life gladly for any one of them.

  He left Franklin unconscious and bleeding on the floor.

  Paul was lost, but if he could just get out of the house...if he could die somewhere close by...people would look. They’d come back. It would end.

  Blood poured from his maimed hands and he slipped time and time again, trying to climb the ladder to the hatch.

  His head swam as he climbed. He wanted to lie down, die. Wanted death, because the pain was immense, right there behind his sanity, waiting for him.

  He fought it, fought the ladder, climbed, flipped open the hatch.

  He stumbled through his childhood home, barely seeing all the small things that should have brought warm memories, but he could think of nothing except making it to the front door.

  With his hands next to useless, his legs buckling as he walked, he made it to the front door.

  He pulled it open and wandered with his eyes closing, opening, closing...

  Wandered, on the cusp of death, into the road that ran through the wide flat fens and into the path of an oncoming lorry.

  *

  Paul died on impact.

  It took only a half hour for the police to arrive on the scene.

  ‘Fuck,’ said the first policeman.

  The second policeman threw up in Paul’s old front garden, right next to Paul’s head.

  The ambulance arrived two minutes later. The paramedics had seen worse, but not by much. Neither slept well that night, and one, a man called Peter Jones, quit his job three months later. It wasn’t because of Paul, but because of what they found down below, in the Black Room.

  Paul’s childhood neighbours stood and talked to the police, pointing at the house from which Paul had emerged. The police found the door still open. A smell escaped the house that both officers had smelled before, a smell of death. They followed their noses and made their careers through a fluke when they found the Black Room, and ended one promising young paramedic’s career for good.

  Franklin wasn’t dead. Curled in a ball, he was covered in his own blood. For a time, the police and the paramedics discussed what had happened. The subject of leaving the man to die came up...but they couldn’t be sure which one was responsible, or if it was both, or neither.

  If they’d known for sure, would they have done it? Left him to bleed out?

  The man called Peter Jones wished he had. He’d wanted to. That was why he quit. Because he wanted to kill whoever was responsible for what had happened in the Black Room, and when he knew he could have, he couldn’t live with it.

  22 people died in the Black Room, as near as the police could eventually figure. Paul died on the road, but it would have been 23. Peter Jones never could live with what he’d failed to do.

  It should have been 24. But Franklin was given 22 life sentences. It should have been enough, but it wasn’t. It never is.

  *

  When dawn was long gone, Irene reached the mainland and the car park by the docks.

  Her feet were sore. She wore sensible boots, but even then, she couldn’t stop the sand getting in between her feet and her socks. Her feet bled, but she didn’t mind the pain. She’d felt worse. Still did. Her cuts hurt and she knew she had sand in those, too. They’d fester if she didn’t do something about them, but she didn’t have time. She could feel Sam calling her, feel his need, in her belly and her heart and her chest. Her breasts were full and tight because he was long overdue a feed. They hurt, too, and somehow that was the worst of her pains, because it was a pain only a mother could know.

  Sam was waiting. He needed her and she needed him more than she’d ever known a mother could.

  But first, she needed a car.

  She didn’t know a damn thing about stealing cars, other than the fact that if you don’t know how to steal a car the next best thing is to have the keys.

  She walked around the car park, checking tourist’s cars for any that were unlocked first. All the tourists would be out with the dawn to see the seals. The first time she’d come to Blakeney she’d done the same, oohed and aahed at the seals, loved the feel of the boat rocking beneath her, the feeling of the sea spray in her hair and on her face, feeling refreshed afterward.

  She wanted Sam to grow up with that love, embraced not only by his mother, but by the whole of the sea, too. To nurture him in Blue House became her reason for going on, for a time, before his birth. Now, she still wanted it, but she knew Blue House, any house...the house didn’t matter. She wasn’t doing this for a house. She was doing it for her son.

  Going to sacrifice herself?

  No. Don’t think like that, honey.

  No, she thought. The voice was right. She was going to kill, not to die.

  Irene nodded to herself and pushed her hair around her face again, covering the worst of her wounds. The last thing she needed was some helpful passerby trying to get her an ambulance. God, she sure as hell looked like she needed one.

  She headed into the car park after dropping off a couple of her essentials, checked the passenger doors on any cars she passed, walking in what she hoped was a casual manner. She only checked passenger doors because she figured most cars had central locking, and someone checking passenger seats looks less suspicious than someone checking a boot or a driver’s seat.

  A woman with a baby carrier the least suspicious of all.

  The sledgehammer and the can of fuel didn’t fit the image she wanted to show anyone looking. She left those at the side of the boathouse to pick up if she could get a car.

  A woman with a torn scalp and numerous lacerations, walking like she was in agony, didn’t help either, but she couldn’t do anything about that but let her hair fall across her face and hope no one was about.

  She found two cars that hadn’t been locked, but there were no keys.

  The third she checked under the driver’s seat, too, because that was where she would have put her keys if she didn’t want to carry them. Maybe if she’d been worried about dropping them in the sea. Probably a woman, she thought. A man was more likely to have pockets and keep his keys on him. A woman would take a handbag, but maybe someone who was a little impractical, hadn’t prepared. The kind of woman who takes a small handbag and wears heels to go walking in the hills. The kind of girl who drove a Beetle, or a Mini, maybe.

  The first Mini she came to she checked under the driver’s seat. Out of sight, but easy to get to. She hit gold. Stealing a car, it turned out was easy. Perhaps it’d be the easiest thing she did all day.

  She scooted over into the driver’s seat and arranged the seat and the mirror for herself, shorter than the woman who’s car she was about to steal. The car was new and started first time. She took a second too check over the controls, look at the dash, and familiarise herself with an unfamiliar car.

  Then she pulled out slowly, like it was the simplest thing in the world to steal someone else’s car. She drove over the bump, shingle surface of the car park nice and slow, too, trying not to drive with the urgency she felt. It wouldn’t do to attract attention, now she was so close to being on the road to the Black Room and the end.

  Irene stopped for a second beside the boathouse and put the can of fuel and the sledgehammer in the passenger’s foot well. Then she turned south and began the long drive to the fenlands of Cambridgeshire. To Paul and Franklin’s family home.

  To the Black Room.

  *

  The back road
s of Norfolk wound and twisted enough to get tourists lost. There were hardly any road signs, but Irene knew these roads. It was where she was raised, and her sense of direction didn’t fail her.

  But she did feel woozy...no sleep but death, a broken neck, all her wounds, the blood loss...she was in trouble after an half an hour, and after an hour she knew she wouldn’t make the journey without food and drink. Some strong coffee, some chocolate.

  Her breasts were throbbing worse than all her wounds. For a moment she wondered if she could somehow relieve the pain that was building. It seemed the nearer to Sam she got the worse the urge to feed became...but it might have been because she’d been away from her baby for so long.

  She checked the clock on the dashboard and realised it was already afternoon. Afternoon, late autumn, she had no chance of making it to the fens before darkness fell.

  Maybe that was for the best. She thought about it, and realised her best chance was to get to Paul and Franklin’s old house in the dark, so she could park unseen down the street.

  But first she needed fuel. She’d lost a lot of blood, and even though her wounds were sealed tight with scabs and sand, her weakness would just continue to get worse.

  She pulled over at a roadside petrol station, a small thing that sold red diesel for tractors, with no CCTV in the forecourt. Then she realised she didn’t have any money.

  Would the woman who left her keys in her girl’s car have left some money?

  She thought maybe she would have. Some change, for parking, for trolleys. That kind of thing. She checked the glove compartment and found nothing, but hit the jackpot when she checked the door pockets. A bottle of water and a small purse full of change and two twenties.

  The fuel gauge was still on half full – it had barely moved since she began driving.

  Just fuel for her, she thought.

  Eat and drive, honey, said a voice in her head. It’s got to end tonight.

  She knew the voice made sense.

  There were stands in the petrol station with two for one on high caffeine drinks. She took four, and two sandwiches, and three bars of chocolate.

  The clerk handed over her change. He didn’t say anything about her wounds, and she kept her head down, but she could sense him looking. She tried to ignore it. Took her change without saying anything but thanks and got into the car and began the next stretch of the journey. Out of Norfolk and into the wide treeless expanse that was the fens.

  *

  After the winding roads of Norfolk, the long roads of the fenlands were a relief for a time, until they too felt like they went on forever, on and on into an unchanging and darkening horizon. Tiredness seeped into Irene’s eyes. She fought to stay awake despite three cans of high caffeine drink that she’d taken.

  It was a lonely drive down. A long way down south. Four hours along crappy country roads with nothing to do but drive and think. She drove from memory. She didn’t need a map to hit the fens. It was easy enough. Once she was there she’d never forget where to go.

  She had no one to talk to but herself.

  She didn’t want to, though, so she talked to Paul instead and pretended he was right there in the car with her.

  ‘Hey baby,’ she said, looking to her left. She could see him there. He hadn’t shaved, and his feet were bare. He had one hairy foot on the dashboard, like he was totally relaxed. His toenails, she saw, needed cutting.

  ‘Honey. I’ve missed you.’

  ‘I miss you,’ she said. She reached across the gearstick and touched his leg, just to feel him, solid, beautiful. His feet smelled a little, from wearing trainers without socks, like he always did.

  It was a good smell.

  He smiled at her. One of his teeth was misaligned though the one that Franklin had knocked out was still there. His teeth had some stains on them from smoking, too, that he just couldn’t brush out. She didn’t mention it. She never had, because he’d pretended he’d given up smoking for her and that was good enough. Anything and everything he did was always good enough, and sometimes a hell of a lot better.

  ‘You know this can’t end well, don’t you?’

  She nodded. She knew it. He didn’t have to ruin it and point it out.

  ‘I’ll get Sam back,’ she said.

  ‘I know you will, honey. I know you will.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Paul,’ she said after another few miles of driving, silence in the car, but a sweet silence full of things that didn’t need to be said.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘But it wasn’t your fault. It was just a stupid accident.’

  ‘I lost our baby,’ she said. ‘I can’t make up for that.’

  ‘Get Sam back, then,’ he said. ‘If you make a mistake, if you’re wrong, you better be damn sure and make it right.’

  She smiled, just a small sad smile that didn’t touch her eyes. But she knew he was right.

  ‘I’m not sorry you fought him, you know. I used to think...used to think...what happened to you...’

  ‘It’s OK. I’m a big boy.’

  She nodded. Drove on for a while. They talked for another hour or so. The journey flew by with him to talk to. He’d always been good company.

  She might have cried while she talked, but it might have just been the tiredness. After all, she hadn’t slept all night. She’d just been dead.

  Paul laughed when she told him that one. He had a good laugh.

  She drove on and on, sometimes quiet, sometimes talking. Then she looked to her left and he wasn’t there anymore.

  *

  The street was a long, wide stretch of road with no spot to park, or pull over. She wanted to park down the street, take her time, walk up and check things out before she went in to the house.

  She could have parked in the road, like Franklin used to, back when she’d dated him. But she was worried about someone sounding their horn at her, even though the road was quiet. The horn might alert Franklin that she was there.

  Did it matter if he knew she was coming?

  Would he be slow? Slow now that the decay in Marc’s dead body had advanced?

  Franklin had told her that close to the mannequin, that vile thing that thump thump thumped with the heart of him, he told her that he could survive in a body for longer.

  Had he flown to Spain to kill his mother and taken the mannequin with him? She thought he had. He would have had to.

  Just how long could he survive in a body, just how strong would he be with the focus of his power close by?

  She had to believe that as a dead man he would be slower. Weaker. Weak enough for her to fight? To win? To burn him down, and that evil mannequin, too?

  She realised she didn’t have a choice but to get on with it.

  ‘Get to it, honey,’ said Paul, even though he wasn’t there.

  Her only option was to park on Paul’s old house’s drive.

  She pulled into the driveway with her lights off. She couldn’t do anything about the sound of the tires on the gravel driveway, but she didn’t need to make too much of a show of arriving.

  She had no idea whether Franklin had seen her already.

  She couldn’t take the chance that he hadn’t.

  She took the sledgehammer from the passenger seat, rather than the fuel. She could burn it down once he’d broken him.

  Irene took a few steadying breaths. Then she pulled the handle, stepped out in the brisk night air. She left the driver’s side door ajar, because she didn’t need to make the noise it would just to shut it.

  Could she really do it? Could she beat him?

  It didn’t matter, she knew. There was no one else, and she’d never trust another living soul to do what she needed to. She would have trusted Paul, or Marc, even, but they were dead, weren’t they?

  She had to trust in herself. She hefted the sledgehammer over her shoulder, ready to swing.

  She could see through the stained glass in the front door into the hallway beyond. Stained glass that Paul had told her Franklin had once broken,
pushing him up against it in a childish fight, back when they were teenagers.

  The hallway was empty.

  She tried the handle. The front door was unlocked. It opened with a swish, a small rug behind it pushed back by the base of the door.

  She put both hands back on the sledgehammer and walked into Franklin’s lair.

  *

  Franklin was in the house somewhere, she knew, because she could...smell him? Sense him?

  No. It was that smell. Shit and rot. Putrescence and sickness. Yellowing flesh and failing bodies.

  Marc rotting. Rotting until Franklin could perform his transformation and steal another body.

  She had to face the fact that she wouldn’t be getting Marc back. Never.

  Her beautiful friend who she’d met for the first time when she interviewed him. Her beautiful friend who in such a short time had become so dear to her.

  The last time she’d see her friend would be when she smashed his face in with a sledgehammer. After that she wouldn’t see him ever again, because she’d douse him in petrol, flick Paul’s lighter to his decaying corpse, and burn him to ashes.

  She left the front door open behind her. With the sledgehammer at the ready, perfectly capable of smashing her best friends face, knowing that he wasn’t her friend any longer, Irene Jacobs walked down the hall, following her nose. That stench was strong.

  He’s down there, in the Black Room. Black with dried blood, she thought. Where Paul died.

  But Franklin wasn’t in the Black Room.

  She heard his soft footsteps a moment too late to turn, that sickening stench becoming stronger at the last second as he rushed her with surprising speed for a dead man. Speed she hadn’t expected and wasn’t prepared for.

  He punched her in the back of the head and lights exploding in her vision. She sagged down, even though she fought it. He caught her in a strong hand around her throat. She gagged because he cut off her wind. Then he jabbed a needle into her neck and pumped her full of sedative.