Without Conscience

by Michael Kerr

  She ran on for another half mile and then stopped to hold the rusted railings that separated her from the now ominous looking river. She breathed deeply, evenly, and gradually calmed herself. Never before had she experienced such a potent sensation of unease. All she wanted now was to be back home and in the light with Charlie and Sam. Every second alone in the darkness was a second too long. She set off, back along the path, not as fast on the return trip, watching for movement and feeling foolish, not able to comprehend why she was teetering on the edge of a panic attack.

  The shadow sprang out at her, detaching itself from the tree, independent from the background that spawned it. In a heartbeat she realised that it was a man. He was dressed all in black, – Johnny Cash – dashing towards her, brandishing something in his hand, and it wasn’t a guitar.

  Oh, Jesus, no, please, her mind shrieked as she swerved sideways and slammed her hip into the palisade of rigid iron.

  Yes...Yes...Yes...Yes. Now, now, he thought as the bitch faltered and reeled sideways, banging into the railings and falling to one knee.

  Tina felt stupefied, unable to move. Numbness permeated throughout her whole being. Her mind was frozen like a bloom being withdrawn from a canister of liquid nitrogen; the petals brittle, changed to a state of petrifaction. She was beyond having the ability to assess or consider any options, but knew on some fundamental level that she must act, do something...anything. Do not just kneel here to accept defeat and die.

  The face was large, inlaid with wide eyes that appeared to be black pools; inhuman and without expression. The mouth was wide open in a demonic grin, and the tongue that curled out from its depths, flicked back and forth over the bottom lip, as a snake might taste the air to locate its prey. In the figure’s hand was a stick; a sharpened piece of wood.

  DO SOMETHING, NOW! A voice commanded Tina from the very core of her brain, to limbs that languished in slack, perfidious mutiny.

  He lashed out at her head with the branch to club her, needing to daze her so that he could pull her pants down, spread her legs and impale her while she was incapable of struggling. Once staked, she would be too preoccupied with the subsequent agony to resist as he slowly strangled her. He would look into her eyes and enjoy a spontaneous ejaculation in his pants as all embodiment drained away to leave the deadpan, vacuous expression of a stuffed animal on her face. It was all going to plan. His life was a series of plans that he viewed as screenplays for movies, to then act out while a part of his mind stood back, meticulously directing the proceedings. He had worked at the BBC, involved with both radio and television productions for long enough to pick up on how the overpaid shirt lifters operated. This was a two-hander; just him and his victim. He had scrolled through his mental screenplay while standing against the rough, damp trunk of the tree:

  ACT 1

  FADE IN ON:

  EXT (exterior). THE RUNNER. CU (close up).

  She is running along the riverbank on the dark side of dawn, her red tresses streaming behind her, breasts jiggling up and down, bra-less under her sweat top.

  SOUND, BG (background).

  The slap of the runner’s soles on the wet path. Her breathing becoming louder as she approaches. The wind whipping through the bare tree branches.

  THE CAMERA DRAWS BACK.

  Through the trees we can now see the antagonist, waiting, watching. CU of his right hand shows that he is gripping a sharpened tree branch.

  THE CAMERA TRACKS WITH KILLER as he darts out, rushing at the runner, knocking her backwards against a barrier of iron railings.

  THE CAMERA SWINGS TO THE RUNNER. She puts her hands up in defence.

  CU of her face, as an expression of startled horror forms. Her mouth opens wide – ECU (extreme close up) – but no sound escapes it.

  THE CAMERA DRAWS BACK as the killer clubs her to the ground and then pulls her sweat bottoms and panties down to her ankles. He kneels between her legs, forces them apart and plunges the sharp length of hand-hewn wood into her.

  ECU of penetration. SOUND. Agonised scream of pain from victim.

  THE CAMERA DRAWS BACK as killer strangles runner. SOUND. Choking.

  Killer pulls knife from sheath on waistband and hacks heart from the now limp corpse. SOUND. Ripping, sucking, as heart is excised. This scene is filmed from killer’s POV (point of view).

  THE CAMERA TRACKS ACROSS TO THE TREES as killer walks into them.

  FADE TO BLACK.

  Tina’s muscles surged with adrenaline, releasing her from the torpor that had threatened to assist her attacker in his venture. She shifted her weight onto her left leg and straight-kicked with her right.

  “Yesss,” she hissed through clenched teeth as her foot connected with the oncoming figure’s kneecap.

  It had been almost four years since Tina had taken her course in self defence. She had noted the rising assaults against women in general and one in particular, which had prompted her to make the decision to be prepared and able to defend herself of paramount importance. Should some man ever decide to mistake her for an easy target, then he would hopefully learn a valid and painful lesson. A friend at the office, Katy, had been date-raped. Allowed a man who picked her up at a nightclub to drive her home. She had found him well spoken, with a good sense of humour and of above average intelligence. He was just the type of guy she was looking for, or so she thought, until he stopped on waste ground, broke her nose with his fist and took her by force. Tina remembered Katy saying that he had not seemed the type who would become violent. That concentrated Tina. A lot of assaults on women were reportedly carried out by men known to them. With that in mind, she had attended evening classes at a local sport centre every Wednesday for eighteen months, to be instructed by a hard-arsed physical education instructor, who by day worked in the PE department at Wandsworth prison. The rigorous training had instilled in her an ability to react against physical attack.

  The man grunted and fell back as his leg gave way. He dropped the stake and clutched at his knee with both hands as he rolled on to his side.

  Tina knew better than to risk any further contact. She had disabled her assailant and given herself the time needed to escape. Without any hesitation she sprinted away, glancing back every few seconds, expecting to see the man bearing down on her. A last view of him – as the pathway curved and a hedge obscured her sight line – was just a dark shape rising clumsily to its feet in the gloom.

  With her heart pounding so fast that her sight dimmed, robbing her of peripheral vision, and her head throbbing as if on the point of bursting, she headed for home. She felt sick to her stomach as vivid pictures of what might have transpired flashed through her mind. And yet simultaneously she was elated, on a high; a thin thread of conceit at having foiled the man mingled with curling waves of fear.

  “Jesus...Jesus...Jesus,” she said with every footfall, until she finally turned into the gateway of her semi on Garfield Road.

  Tina’s lungs burned as she staggered, panting like an overheated dog, into the kitchen, where Charlie was drinking tea, still in the T-shirt and boxer shorts that he had slept in.

  “What…” he began, looking away from the early morning news on the portable television.

  “P... Police...Charlie,” Tina gasped, sinking into the chair opposite him. “Phone the police...now. I think I was just attacked by the Park Killer.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  He hobbled-limped-dragged himself back through the strip of trees that bordered what had once been a towpath, and struggled along a dark side street to the car.

  “Christ Almighty!” Tears of pain and frustration spiked his eyes as he jerked the door open and it slammed against his injured leg. The bitch had fractured, or at least displaced his fucking kneecap. It felt as though a white-hot nail had been hammered into it.

  Have to get away from here. The cow will ring the police as soon as she gets home. She may even have a mobile. Oh, God. Every second counted. Move, move, move. Ignore the pain and get the fuck out of the area
. He cranked the engine into life, released the brake, then screamed out as he depressed the clutch and his leg seemed to fragment like a hand grenade going off.

  “I KNOW WHERE YOU FUCKING LIVE,” he shouted hoarsely at the windscreen as he pulled away from the kerb. “I’ll deal with you later, you...you whore.”

  His mental screenplay had not just been adapted or slightly modified. It had been totally rewritten and bastardised by one lucky kick. He could imagine the camera tracking him as he drove along the wet, city streets. His carefully choreographed one act teleplay had been fucked-up beyond all recognition.

  Blink.

  Home. Thank Christ, or George the auto pilot who was his alter ego and somehow took care of things while he was...away. He was parked outside the house with no memory of the past half an hour. It amazed him that he could function with no awareness of his actions.

  Unmoving for a minute, he waited until an old guy walking his dog had reached the end of the street and vanished around the corner. Then, sure that the coast was clear, he opened the car door and put his right foot out on to the pavement. His left leg wouldn’t bend. It felt like an overfilled sausage skin, with the added ingredient of live nerves that were bombarding his brain with messages of pain...in stereo...with the volume wound up to the limit. It seemed to take forever to negotiate the few yards between the car and his front door. Every step was excruciating, and his stomach was churning. It reneged and forced its contents up, out of his mouth; a geyser of steaming, half-digested food. He kept moving as he retched and gagged, unmindful of the mess down the front of his clothing.

  Inside at last with sweat popping from his body, he limped into the kitchen and swallowed six Nurofen down with Scotch, which he chugged straight from the bottle. He undressed, which was a painful exercise. After stuffing the soiled clothing into the washing machine, he took a tray of ice cubes from the fridge, to crack them out onto a tea towel and hold the makeshift ice pack to the damaged joint as he smoked cigarettes and sipped more Scotch.

  By midmorning he had emptied the bottle of Bells and taken a total of twelve painkillers. Armed with another make-do ice pack, and feeling drunk and tired, he somehow made it to the bedroom and lay out on the bed, facing his gallery.

  “Change of plan, Caroline, you arrogant, supercilious cow,” he slurred. “No more rehearsals to get your attention. I’m going to deal with that journalist and Ross, and then I’m coming for you, ready or not.”

  Wanting more Scotch, needing to urinate, and feeling dizzy and sick, he passed out, and as usual began to dream of his dear, dead mother...

  …Linda Cain had cherished her son. He had his dead father’s high cheekbones and inky black eyes that held the faraway look of a dreamer who could travel anywhere without moving from his chair.

  Without Bobby, Linda would have had no sense of purpose or focus. Life had been hard enough, and worsened considerably when her husband, Donald, had died. It was the love for Bobby that had given Linda the fortitude to work long hours at the tannery, and somehow make ends meet. The hardest part had been not knowing why Donald had committed suicide. Sometimes there are no answers, just questions.

  In his dream, his mother spoke: “You’ll never find another woman to look after you the way I do, Bobby, and that’s a fact,” Linda said, standing in the kitchen – as it had been back then, so clean and homely – ironing clothes that were shiny and thin and worse for wear.

  “I know, Mum,” the teenage Bobby Cain of yesteryear answered.

  A part of his psyche knew that it was a sleeping vagary, and watched the mother and son re-enact a sliver of life, with him as a spectator at the other side of an illusory room.

  He studied the mature, matronly woman wearing a floral-patterned housecoat, who had rollers in her netted hair, and who paused to stand the brown-bottomed iron upright on the ‒ God forbid ‒ asbestos end of the board for it to spit and hiss steam as she sipped black, syrup-sweet tea from a cup that was part of a service which had belonged to her mother.

  “I found a magazine in your room, Bobby,” Linda said. “You worry me, son. You’re at that age when the sight of a woman’s naked flesh will play havoc with your hormones. If you get yourself too excited, your acne will get worse and never go away. You’ll have craters on your face like the surface of the moon for the rest of your life. Do you know what I’m sayin’?”

  “Yes, Mum,” Bobby said, not having the slightest idea of why thumbing through an old dog-eared girlie magazine – that he had traded for a wonky-bladed penknife – or wanking would cause his zits to escalate or become a permanent feature. Ralph Pibus, his pal, had a stack of much more explicit magazines, was always jacking off, and had skin as smooth as a baby’s arse. What did mothers know?

  “Most girls are sluts, Bobby. Remember that, son. If you let your urges rule your life, some loose little bitch will make sure you get her in the family way. Before you know it you’ll be tied down, raisin’ kids and payin’ bills. All your hopes and dreams will come to nothin’. You’ll be a Mr Middle-age, trapped in a way of life that you would hate. Is that what you want, Bobby? Is it?”

  “But, Mum―”

  “But, nothin’. Don’t be a meal ticket for some grabbin’ whore. Keep your emotions under control. Best when you get older if you just...just have your way with them. I know a man has desires that he can’t ignore, but there’s no need to commit yourself to the first tart that lets you get inside her knickers.”

  “Dad was married to you.”

  “Your dad found one in a million, Bobby. I encouraged him in everythin’ he did, and was always there for him, whatever his need. When he died, a big part of me died with him. You’re all that keeps me goin’, son. You know that, don’t you?”

  Died? The watching thirty-five-year-old dreamer thought, oh, yes, his dad had died all right. He’d topped himself in the old wooden garage at the bottom of the back garden.

  The dream shifted, to become much darker as more years melted away. “Go and tell your father his tea is ready,” Linda said. And at just nine-years-old he had gone out and opened the side door of the garage, to stand in profound shock and with pee running down his leg as he stared up at the still-swinging figure of his dad.

  He was now that boy again inside the garage. He couldn’t move; mesmerised by the human pendulum and the attendant squeaking of the blue nylon rope which was chafing against the wooden crossbeam above, that it was tied to. His father’s eyes were bulging. Bobby had seen a snake coiled around a mouse on a nature programme just a few weeks earlier, and the rodent’s eyes were the same, almost popping out of its head under the pressure. His dad’s mouth was wide open, tongue out, unnaturally long and as blue as a grape. Bobby may as well have been set in concrete. He was not only rooted to the spot, but could not avert his eyes from the horrific sight. Small tendrils of macabre fascination blended with a sense of fear and revulsion as he studied the single, long string of viscous spittle that hung from his now late father’s bottom lip and chin. He took in the whole picture. The little finger of the corpse’s right hand was still twitching. It was much later that Bobby realised that the last sight Donald Cain had, must have been of his son entering the garage and looking up at him.

  Bobby might have remained there forever, or at least until his mother had come out to see what was keeping them both, had the hot, malodorous stench of human waste not made him recoil and stumble out into the fresh air.

  The dream advanced, instantly devouring the years. Bobby was now over twenty years old, and it was Christmas, though his mother was oblivious to the festive hullabaloo.

  At first, Bobby had cared for her at home, bathing, feeding and dressing her. But even a doting son can only do so much; what with work, and the fact that it was becoming unsafe to leave her unattended as her diseased brain robbed her of all intellectual power. He had no choice but to off-load the problem to an NHS nursing home.

  “Do you know who I am, Mum?” Bobby said, sitting next to the bed and holding her liver-sp
otted and claw-like hand on the last occasion he had bothered to visit the depressing Victorian institution, which he believed had not been afforded an iota of modernisation or redecorating since it had been built.

  “Of course, Donald, my darlin’,” Linda said, now trapped back in the seventies in a time that spared her the harsh reality of her current condition.

  He had only seen her once more, lying pale, waxen and coffin-bound at the local Co-operative’s chapel of rest. It was at that moment, standing and looking down at her empty husk that he had decided to ‘do his own thing’. From that day on, now alone, he had allowed the dark side of his personality to blossom, without the restrictive influence of his mother to cramp his style. He was inflamed, casting aside all inhibitions that had dictated how he should behave, if not think. Now enlightened, he determined that only his own instincts could be trusted. In the confused world about him, he would be true to his own doctrine, not constrained by any concepts that had hitherto suppressed his free spirit.

  Awake now, and the nightmare of past events evaporated. The pain in his knee was no more than a dull throb; manageable, bearable. More ice required. Only a couple of hours had passed. It had felt so much longer than that. The bad dream had seemed to be in real time. He’d read somewhere that the average dream was of only a few seconds’ duration. But that was probably drivel. You couldn’t believe anything you read. Slowly, carefully, he made his way through to the kitchen and took another two pain killers, washing them down not with alcohol, but with a glassful of cold water. Feeling better, he lit a cigarette and eased himself into a chair with his left leg stuck out, ramrod straight. It was time to consider his options and prioritise them.