Insulation (A Horror Suspense Novella)

by Saunders, Craig

  He made a fair dent in the joint. He thought about a Coke, but decided against it.

  For some reason, he felt like David's torso was leering at him, taking the piss. Somehow.

  Of course, it wasn't.

  Get the fucking job done. Feel better. Drinks and maybe a wank after...

  With an angry grunt, despite the mellow weed, he looked at the torso in the bag once more. For just a second, he thought about having a wank right there. Then he laughed at himself, because when you came right down to it that was pretty fucking inappropriate.

  Simon wore coveralls when he worked. When he did the cutting, though, it was just easier all round to work naked.

  'Fuck's sake,' he said, looking yet again at the torso, then at the gap in the new ceiling. He knew it was his own fault. What did they say? Measure twice, cut once. His arms ached, down his triceps and into his back, through the rear deltoid. He’d had to saw some of the bones just to get the fat cunt into manageable chunks, and do some work with the cleaver besides. He ached already. He didn’t want to do any more.

  But the cutting wasn’t done.

  'Your own fault, fuckhead,' he said to himself. Then, resigned to more hard work and probably blisters, he dragged David’s torso into the bathroom. He took off his coveralls and set to work.

  *

  IX.

  The following day Yvonne dropped the corner of her couch while she was moving it and the floorboard beneath her snapped in two. The floorboards were bare. One end, three feet away, pulled loose from its flat nails and stuck up a couple of inches.

  ‘Arseholes,’ she said.

  She undid the three locks on her door and padded out into the hall. Then, hated herself as she went back in, took off her slippers, and put some sensible shoes on. Only then did she head down the stairs to her landlord’s apartment.

  She checked her watch, too, and hated herself a little more. But she knocked just the same. She waited a whole minute until Simon came to the door.

  ‘Afternoon,’ she said.

  ‘Hi. Problem?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry, but I was moving my couch and I...ah...broke the floorboard. It could probably be nailed back down again...’

  ‘Got some experience of DIY?’

  She ignored that. But now she wasn’t sure. In fact, she was entirely sure this wasn’t a good idea. Any kind of conversation with the little dick was going to go pretty much the same way.

  ‘I wasn’t sure how it works...you know...if you do the maintenance, or if you get someone in...’

  I'm almost stuttering, she thought. I sound like an idiot. He's just a kid. Weird kid, yes...but just a kid.

  Right?

  But she did think there was something weird about him. So...why the hell was she standing on his doorstep, when she could have just called down on the phone?

  Because it seemed polite?

  No, she thought. That was wrong. It had nothing to do with being polite, but more to do with her own damned curiosity. Curiosity about the weird stench she couldn't place, and about the weird landlord in his dirty clothes smelling of weed and that other, underlying smell. The one under his smell, under his weed...

  ‘I’ll come up and take a look at it,’ he said, and immediately closed the door behind him before she had a chance to rethink anything or change her mind. She half expected him to make some kind of snide comment, but he seemed happy enough. The smell, she noted, that smell of decay or just still, lifeless flesh, fled. As soon as he shut the door, in fact, as though that smell were a prisoner trapped in his apartment, like it tried to get out but had been foiled at the last step.

  For a second, too, she thought she heard something. A sigh...like wind through the leaves on a tree. A gentle sound, but somehow sad.

  No, you did not hear a sigh, she told herself. But she wondered, even as she tried to dismiss that niggle. That tickle.

  Nothing, probably. Nothing.

  To his credit he didn’t try to let himself in when they reached her front door, but waited for her to open it, and for her to invite him.

  She did. With her back to him, which she found she didn't like, she led him to the offending floorboard.

  ‘Sorry. I dropped the couch on it. It was a little heavy for me.

  ‘OK, let’s get it out of the way. Then I’ll see about fixing this for now. I’ll have to get a new board, but you don’t want to be tripping over that all day.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘You might hurt yourself,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You want a coffee? I’ve got a pot on.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said.

  It seemed like he was a different person than the first time she’d met him. But there was something there in his eyes, for sure. Something that tickled, still.

  Yvonne got the coffee from the kitchen. When she came back, padding on socked feet, she looked down at the floorboard, which stuck up more now he’d taken the couch of it.

  He had his back turned while he struggled with her couch. Under the floorboard she thought she saw part of a man's face, pulled taut like a parody of a robber hiding his features beneath a pair of tights. This man's nose was squashed flat by a clear plastic vacuum bag, though, rather than ladies' underwear. The face looked a lot like that of her neighbour, David.

  *

  X.

  Yvonne moved to one side so she couldn’t see David’s face peering up at her.

  Jesus...Jesus...please...

  She put on her sweetest smile, though she must have been pale.

  Oh, oh. Jesus. Jesus. She wasn’t religious, but she couldn’t stop it. A litany in her head.

  She smiled as she held out the coffee, no doubt in her mind who was responsible for the head beneath her floorboards...the man right there, about to take the coffee from her hand...her hand would be inches from his...

  ‘Coffee,’ she said. She knew the statement was inane, but she wasn't thinking about the coffee. She was thinking, though, hard and fast, sliding out of control through sudden terror.

  I'm in the presence of a madman.

  His apartment was below hers. The dead man was in his apartment. The psychopath’s apartment. Somehow, the sick bastard had stuffed David into his ceiling. David, the dead man.

  She felt like crying but smiled. The coffee shook, but she fucking smiled. She wanted to run, to scream for help, but she thrust the coffee at him instead. He thanked her, and for an instant she thought she saw his eyes register something in her face, but he returned her smile, all yellow teeth and stinking breath.

  ‘Do you mind?’ he said, nodding at the couch, panting from exertion.

  ‘No, not at all. Heavy, isn’t it?’ Keeping her voice light. Moving, subtly, she hoped, away...anything to put a little distance between them again.

  He sat. ‘Yeah. Hard going. Not as fit as I could be.’

  ‘Me, either. I keep meaning to get some exercise...’ Truth was, she carried a little extra weight.

  Too much, if it comes to running.

  He was panting, but she wasn’t convinced he really was out of breath.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Carrying a couple of extra pounds. Bit fat, truth be told...’ Blathering like an idiot. But she had to keep him talking. Somehow. Didn’t matter how. Just long enough to get over to the floorboard and stamp it down. Something. Just enough so she couldn’t see David. So he wouldn’t know. He couldn’t know.

  ‘Just the right size,’ he said, and he was smiling, too, but it wasn’t a comforting smile.

  She knew what it was she’d seen flicker in his eyes, now. Madness. She’d written about it often enough, but soft, not hard, like this was. She didn’t think she’d ever actually seen it, that way a madman's eyes flickered and twinkled like dark stars that ate light and life.

  Now she'd seen it up close, and he was in her apartment. Just the two of them, cosy, neighbours sharing coffee.

  It'd be almost intimate if it wasn't for the dead body under the floorboards.r />
  ‘Well, I guess I should have a look at the floorboards,’ he said. Could’ve been sincere, she knew, but she didn’t think he was. But she held onto that. Maybe he didn’t know what she’d seen. Maybe she could reach the front door.

  Slightly overweight, just the wrong side of forty-five. Three locks on the door holding her in.

  In the red corner, a madman. Young, and strong enough to overpower a big guy like David...

  ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘Could it wait a minute? The taps in the bathroom have a small leak and...’

  The phone rang.

  Shit.

  She stood dumbly, staring at him, like she was trying to will the phone to unring. She knew she must look like an idiot. Did she pick it up, scream for help, or try to get him out of her apartment until she could get the police round?

  Fuck off! she thought, but the bastard thing kept right on ringing. Insistent and shrill, a ring that could keep on going all day.

  ‘You want to get that?’

  ‘I suppose I should,’ she said, smiling, the smile tight on her face, making her cheeks ache.

  She picked it up. She didn’t turn her back, like a lot of people do when they’re on the phone in company, but half-turned.

  ‘Yvonne?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘It’s Francis.’

  Keep your voice light. Not frightened. Not frightened.

  ‘Oh, hi. How are you?’

  ‘Fine, fine. Just thought I’d give you an update.’

  ‘I’ve got company at the moment. Can I call you back in a while?’

  ‘OK. I guess it can wait.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, thinking wildly. ‘My landlord’s just come round. A problem with the floorboards.’

  ‘Oh. OK. Well, nothing urgent to report.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘It’s pretty urgent. Bit dangerous to leave it like that.’

  ‘Yvonne?’

  ‘Better go, OK? Get back to me?’

  ‘Yvonne? Are you OK?’

  ‘Alright, then. Speak to you later.’

  ‘Shall I call someone?’

  ‘Thanks. Yeah. See you.’ All natural. She hoped.

  She turned round and he was standing right there, a couple of feet in front of her. Close enough for her to reach out a push, maybe he’d fall, maybe she could make it to the door. Maybe. Maybe.

  But he was grinning, and her legs were suddenly cold as ice and solid, frozen to her bare floorboards. Fear stopped her, and by then, it was too late.

  ‘You saw then?’ he said, still grinning, his rank teeth on full show.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Under the floorboards?’

  ‘What? I don’t...’ she began, thinking she’d make up something, but then not thinking much more because his fist lashed out, fast and strong for a small guy. It connected pretty well with her jaw, shattering it. She was out, and down. Not far enough under that comforting blanket of unconsciousness that so she couldn’t hear or feel, though. She felt the thump thump of her head hitting the risers on the way down the stairs, and her brain bouncing in rhythm within her skull.

  *

  XI.

  Pounding, bloody pain. Black hounds with red eyes snapped inside Yvonne's head. It felt like her brain was rocking back and forth, a crazy, loose seesaw with a mean fat kid on one end and her on the other. She tried to get her bearings; it must be a migraine, and a big bitch of one, too. If she could just figure out what day it was, then she'd know how long she’d been under...wondering if she might not need to phone a doctor...do something...

  It was dark, but that might be because she couldn’t see. Sometimes in the worst migraines she all but lost her vision.

  But then it came back to her.

  Little man broke my jaw.

  Her landlord. Her psychotic, psychopathic downstairs neighbour.

  She tried to roll her way up and off her floorboards to find she wasn't in her apartment. She was bound by her hands to the taps in the bath. Not her bath, either. The bindings were the synthetic kind, like some sort of blue wire. Maybe a heavy fishing line, like for sea fishing, marlin, or tuna, or something like that.

  Shit, she didn’t know. Could be it was just a washing line. Either way, it wasn’t going to give. She was bound up tight as she could be. Her hands were a different hue to her forearms, and numb. Almost complete numb, but at the same time her wrists and her hands hurt, so it couldn’t be complete numbness, could it?

  I'm naked, too.

  At some point he’d stripped her out of her clothes. She could feel a nick on her ribs, maybe six inches down from her armpit.

  He cut off my bra...fucking...

  Did he rape me?

  No. This wasn’t that. This was death, pure and simple. Her blood ran cold, because she’d seen David, because she was bound tight in a cold bath, because she’d wet herself and her urine had run up her back. Even out for the count, it seemed her body knew she was dead, or as sure as hell soon would be.

  She remembered it all. The face in the ceiling. Then it clicked in her mind and her gut, at last, in a way that made her think she might just vomit over herself right there.

  The angle of his face...his head...no way a body could contort like that...

  He'd been decapitated. Dismembered, too? Maybe...

  The little fucking nut landlord stuffed poor David in the ceiling. The smell made sense to her now...that lingering smell that signaled the absence of life where once the living walked.

  Now she found herself bound by her hands to the bath taps. Her urine flowed up her back, cold now, toward the plug.

  The same way her blood would flow when he came back.

  She didn’t have any doubt that was what he wanted. No first impressions necessary on her part, nor guesswork. No bargaining with herself, like, he didn’t really mean it, he wouldn’t, not really.

  Just cold terror and pain.

  No doubt.

  When he came back, he’d cut her up and stuff her in the walls, too.

  She cried then, as her jaw and the soft tissues inside her skull send out a pulse, a wave of pain. Cried out, and cried, too. Because of the pain in her head, but the pain in her arms, too, and the surety that no matter what she did, she was about to die. There wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

  Kill...

  She strained, trying to hear his whispers over the drums beating in her head.

  He said, 'Kill,' ...he said...

  She couldn't convince herself her hearing was broken. She heard the word clearly. She tried to hear him, hear if he said anything else. Maybe get a sense of where he was...how far from her.

  He's talking to himself. Somewhere out there...God, she thought, save me...save me...he sounds insane...so insane...that's not even his voice...

  She knew it wasn't his voice. She'd seen movies, serial killers with split personalities, or just utterly mental people speaking in tongues, or foreign languages, or in voices not their own.

  She concentrated hard for a few seconds longer, hoping she'd hear the front door close and his footsteps...but...

  No bargaining, Yvonne...right? Don't kid yourself.

  But hope still flickered. The voice from the madman didn't come again, and her mind began drifting back to hope, almost spitefully.

  What about Francis? Francis Wayne knew. Did she get it? Sure, she got it. Yvonne was far from stupid, and so was Francis.

  That flicker that burned inside wouldn't quite die. But then, would someone get to her in time? Hope, it seemed, was no better than a small candle against a heavy wind, because of course they wouldn’t come to save her at the last moment, because death didn’t wait for timely interventions, and because she could hear him now...just down the hall.

  *

  XII.

  Simon heard her rustling in the bathroom. He stood in his bedroom, in the metal t-shirt he didn’t understand. He wore stained jeans, a pair of tattered Converse, no socks. He wore no underpants and no jewelry for chunks
of flesh to get stuck under.

  He opened his webcam and stood in front of the computer. He had to stand back to get most of his body in, so he could keep a record.

  He clicked and took a shot of himself dressed.

  Then he sat on his bed and took a long pull of a lit joint. He held the smoke in until he felt his heart rushing as it fought to find oxygen. Only when his head was light did he exhale. Inhale. Exhaled and smoked again.

  He held the smoke in his lungs and took off his t-shirt, slowly.

  Under the t-shirt his upper body was scarred. Long thin scars from habitual self-harm, but not on his forearms, like he wanted people to see. It wasn’t a cry for help. He just liked it. He liked to cut when...but he found himself getting hard and didn’t want to. It wasn’t right. He didn’t want to be naked and hard in front of his upstairs neighbour. None of this was her fault, and he didn’t want her to think badly of him.

  Going to die...die...die...

  'Fuck off,' he said, automatically. Sometimes he heard things, sure, but didn't everyone? When you're about to kill someone, spirits, memories, whatever...they got jumpy. So fucking what?

  Simon didn't care.

  What he did care about was what people thought of him, when they died. He didn't want them to think badly of him. He couldn't bear that. The voices...sometimes they said other stuff, things that really got under his skin.

  'Can't do it,' he told himself, sniffing. He licked the paper curling at the roach on his joint, then settled it back down with a stained forefinger.

  If you're going to cut someone up, you don't go to it with your cock all proud and on show...naked, she'd understand. Shit, she's probably tried to wash blood out before.

  But with a hard-on? He didn’t want her to get the wrong impression. Like he was some kind of pervert.

  He pulled his jeans down. He wanted to cut, but he’d do that later.

  Took his jeans off over his Converse, then pulled off his shoes last. Top to bottom. That was the way it had to be.

  He took another picture. Himself, naked, holding the cleaver.