THE SOUL FIXER (A psychological thriller)

by D. M. Mitchell

  ‘What if this is a dead end?’ said Paul anxiously.

  ‘It shouldn’t be,’ said Matty. ‘But if it is, remember that I wasn’t the crazy fool who suggested we do this! It’s a fine time to have second thoughts!’

  Eventually they came upon a side tunnel that led off into darkness. ‘This looks promising, right?’ Susan asked as Matty held the lamp out before him and they all crowded round to look inside the passageway.

  Matty closed his eyes, tried to think. ‘It follows a basic pattern,’ he said. ‘But this place is so different to anything I’ve ever seen. This is unique.’

  ‘So do we take it or not?’ Paul urged, looking back the way they’d come. There was no sign of Douglas.

  ‘Maybe. Before shooting off in another direction, I think we ought to see where this passage leads first,’ he advised, pointing down the tunnel they were in.

  Paul and Susan agreed and they set off at a pace. They’d gone but twenty yards when the passage led them into a small chamber. It was the feared dead end. ‘I guess we don’t have a choice, then,’ Susan said, and they immediately turned about and headed back towards the newly discovered tunnel. Reaching it, Matty ducked inside first, followed by Susan. As Paul was about to step inside he saw a flicker of light playing on the ancient stone walls and Douglas hove into view. On seeing Paul he raised his shotgun and let off a shot. It hit the flat stone of the tunnel entrance and showered Paul in dust and stones. Clumps of dry earth were dislodged from the ceiling by the loud retort.

  ‘I see you!’ he said. ‘I see you!’

  Paul waved quickly at Susan and Matty to get a move on, and he followed hot on their heels, feeling extremely vulnerable until they’d turned a dogleg. They paused here, listening. They heard the scrabbling of boots on earth. Paul swung the shotgun round the wall and let off a blind shot. It momentarily lit up the tunnel, and Douglas’ sneering face. The shot hit the side of the tunnel. Douglas was quick to get off a shot, and his aim was far more accurate; part of the wall behind which Paul sheltered crumbled under the impact.

  ‘Christ!’ he breathed. He motioned for the others to move further into the tunnel.

  ‘It’s too dangerous this way,’ said Matty. ‘As far as I can make out the tunnel is headed directly towards the cliffs.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So I don’t know how stable it is or even if it leads out.’

  Another shot rang out and the time for discussion was over. They bolted down the tunnel and followed it as it took another sharp dogleg to the right. More empty chambers lined the walls on either side. And then the tunnel widened out into a large domed chamber, lined with what looked to be deep alcoves, but it was a dead end. Paul was about to step forward to make sure when Matty held him back.

  ‘No, don’t do that.’ He raised his finger for quiet. ‘Hear that?’ It was the sound of the sea. But this was coming from beneath their feet.

  ‘The sea is below us?’ said Susan, her trepidation escalating up another notch.

  ‘It’s just as I feared. The sea has carved out caves in the cliffs, and I think we’re standing over one right now. The ground beneath our feet could be eggshell thin.’ He lifted the lamp. ‘See, the walls have collapsed downwards, the entire chamber is sagging. It’s ready to collapse.’ His terrified face turned to them. ‘Keep to the edge, near the walls,’ he said, waving them urgently to the side.

  Paul did as he was told and Susan pressed her back against the stone wall. ‘What do you mean collapse? Like right now?’ he asked.

  ‘I don’t know! It could take ten, twenty, a hundred years left on its own, but it hasn’t had three people clumping through it before.’

  ‘Shit!’ said Paul.

  Their attention was snagged by the sound of Douglas scrambling down the tunnel.

  ‘We have to take cover in one of the alcoves,’ said Susan, and started to inch her way round the side of the wall towards the back of the chamber. The others followed suit. They’d just managed to conceal themselves behind a jutting pillar of stacked stone when Douglas came to stand at the chamber’s entrance. He saw the lamplight casting its glow. Made out the movement of shadows.

  ‘There’s nowhere for you to go, you know that,’ he said, taking a step into the chamber.

  ‘You come any nearer, Douglas and I’ll blow your head off!’ shouted Paul.

  Douglas laughed. It sounded deeply menacing within the chamber’s confines. ‘Yeah, sure you will. Your aim is shit. Why don’t you come out, show yourselves? We can talk this over, maybe come to some sort of an arrangement. It doesn’t have to end messily.’ He turned his torch off, slipped it into his coat. Crouched low and moved a pace or two further in. ‘I was in the Falklands,’ he said. ‘Goose Green…’

  ‘Bully for you, soldier-boy,’ Paul returned.

  ‘Flushed out cringing little Argies from their dirty little foxholes. Watched them squeal like pigs, throwing down their guns or making a bolt for it. There was this one guy, though. Thought he could take on the entire British army. Put up one hell of a fight, he did. All his pals had bought it, so it was just him. Just him and me. It was me that got him, in the end. It just takes time, patience.’ He took another step closer. ‘Got a dilemma, haven’t you? Turn out your light so I can’t see you and then you can’t see me, can you? Won’t know where I am.’

  Paul signalled for Susan to hand him two cartridges, which she dug out of her pocket and handed over. She noticed how his hands were shaking dreadfully as he popped them in.

  He swung the gun round the pillar and let loose a blind shot into the dark. The noise was deafening in the confines. Their ears rang with the explosion. More earth thudded down.

  ‘Jesus!’ said Matty in terror. ‘Did you feel that?’

  Susan was nodding quickly. The ground beneath their feet had shivered distinctly. ‘The noise,’ she whispered to Paul. ‘I think it’s causing the floor to collapse!’

  He blinked rapidly, wiping sweat from his forehead. ‘That’s just what we need right now.’ He pressed his back tight against the stone wall. All three of them were scrutinising the ground at their feet.

  ‘Why, Douglas? Why are you doing this?’ shouted Susan, trying to buy time.

  Paul indicated for another cartridge to replace the one he’d just used. She complied and he loaded the gun.

  ‘Why? Money,’ he said. ‘Short and simple. To make enough to get off this fucking island. The odd-BMW would come in handy, too. What else is there? When was the last time people like you had to scratch with your bare hands for a fucking living, huh? Money, that’s what’s important.’

  ‘So it’s all been a sham?’ she said, her anger rising above her fear. ‘Seeing our daughter, that wasn’t real?’

  He laughed. ‘Come on, woman! Contacting the fucking dead? Nobody can do that. Of course it’s a sham. Annabel, she put people in a trance, that’s what her special gift was. Like all the others you were so desperate to contact your daughter you’d do anything, believe anything. All Annabel did was to conjure up what was in your head, with a little help from us to guide her.’

  ‘And as part of the session you’d pump us for other information, right?’ said Paul, steadying himself for another shot. He’d seen Douglas over to his left in the light from his last shot. ‘Each session a little more…’

  ‘You got it,’ said Douglas.

  ‘And once you had enough from us, we’d be dead meat.’ Paul’s breathing was hard and he tried to control it.

  ‘Afraid so. But from you, Paul, we got something extra. Something we hadn’t bargained for. Rose MacDonald’s dead, did you know that?’

  Paul stiffened. ‘You’re lying.’

  ‘Rose?’ said Susan. ‘What are you talking about, what has she got to do with anything? How do you know about Rose?’

  ‘He’s playing with our heads, Susan.’ But she could clearly see he was extremely troubled.

  ‘Trust me, Paul,’ Douglas continued. ‘She’s dead. Took a long bath and drowned. Our guy on
the mainland took care of that.’

  ‘You’re crazy, Douglas,’ said Susan. ‘You’ll stop at nothing…’

  ‘You don’t know your husband like you think you do, Susan.’

  Paul swiftly swung round the pillar again and let off a round. But Douglas had moved to the middle of the chamber again, trying to sneak round to get a better aim on them, and Paul’s shot hit bare rock.

  Douglas immediately put the gun to his shoulder and let off an explosive round.

  In an instant the ground beneath Douglas collapsed and he fell, his arms being thrown up, the gun spiralling into the air, and with a piercing shriek he disappeared into the huge hole that had opened up in the earth floor of the chamber. They heard the sound of rocks crashing against rocks, the rain of soft earth and pebbles, and then silence.

  Matty crept around the side of the chamber to the hole, lifting the lamp over the edge. Susan followed him. They both peered down into the dark.

  They were looking into a considerable cave, partially flooded with seawater, at one end a thin fissure, looking like a piece of frozen lightning against the blackness of the rock, through which the sea was pouring. The base of the cave was a mass of boulders and rocks, and laid across them was Douglas. He was moaning softly. It was obvious from the crazy angle of his legs that both of them had been badly broken.

  As her eyes became accustomed to the light in the cave, Susan saw that there were barnacles and limpets clustered all around the walls, reaching to a height twice that of an average man. Soon, this entire cave would be flooded with seawater.

  ‘Help me!’ Douglas shouted. ‘Don’t leave me here!’ He raised his head and looked across to the fissure. ‘The tide’s coming in. I’ll be drowned.’

  ‘We’ve got to help him,’ said Matty urgently.

  ‘Leave him,’ said Paul dully.

  ‘Don’t listen to him, Susan,’ Douglas cried helplessly. ‘He’s going to kill you. That’s why he agreed to come to Connalough Point.’

  ‘Don’t listen to him, Susan,’ said Paul, this time firmer.

  Matty set the lamp on the edge of the hole, glanced cautiously towards Paul, then to Susan. He stood up.

  ‘He told us, when he was in his trance…’ Douglas gasped, clutching his leg. He screwed his eyes up in agony. ‘He and your friend Rose MacDonald, they were seeing each other. Had been for years. They arranged to have you murdered, get your money so they could set up together. They employed a guy called Eddie Hull to do it. Only he got the wrong woman. He murdered your daughter instead.’

  ‘He’s talking bollocks,’ said Paul, but the features of his face were set hard and cold.

  ‘He and Rose, they planned it so that once you were over here you’d have a nasty accident while you were out walking on the cliffs. Said you were to take a fall. He was going to push you, Susan. He didn’t care about contacting your dead daughter. He never believed in that. Take a look at him – his ankle’s miraculously got better.’

  Susan frowned, then realised Paul had not used his stick or hobbled once in the tunnels. ‘What’s going on?’ she said.

  ‘He never hurt his ankle,’ Douglas shouted. ‘He’d planned to follow you when you went for one of your walks, do the dirty on you and then claim he’d been holed up in the cottage with a bad ankle. Gave him an alibi. And that’s why we had to dispose of Rose; she was in on all this, knew you two were here, so we had to make sure she didn’t blab when you didn’t come back.’

  ‘You bastards!’ said Paul, the bubble of his enforced composure suddenly ruptured. ‘You killed her?’

  ‘Tell me this isn’t true, Paul…’ Susan said, suddenly feeling extremely sick and giddy.’

  ‘What’s more he’s the one who killed that guy Eddie Hull. Gave him an overdose. Just to make sure he didn’t talk either. Get me out,’ said Douglas, ‘and I’ll help you nail him.’

  ‘You killed our daughter?’ said Susan incredulously. ‘It was you and Rose all along?’

  In response, Paul lifted the shotgun, aimed it at Matty and pulled the trigger. The young man lurched backwards, a bouquet of red splashing out over his chest. He toppled head first down the hole and Douglas screeched as his body hit the boulder beside him, his head making contact first. It smashed open with the sound of someone snapping a length of wood in two.

  Susan screamed, backed away, the ground at her feet crumbling, sending a shower of rocks into the hole after Matty’s body.

  ‘You, it was you who killed her!’ shouted Paul. ‘You should have been in that bed, not Becky!’ His face was contorted with rage. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. ‘And now Rose is dead, and all because of you!’

  ‘This isn’t happening!’ she said, shaking her head as if trying to wake herself from some dreadful nightmare. But the sight of Matty’s contorted body on the rocks proved it was very real. ‘If it was money you needed, I’d have given you money,’ she said.

  ‘Charity? Think I want your fucking charity? Think I wanted just a tiny part of what you had, like a chicken being thrown grain? You got it for free, all that money, and yet me, I worked so fucking hard and got nothing out of it. I never loved you, Susan. I hated being with you. I wanted you dead and gone, wanted you out of the way so that Rose and I could finally be together.’

  ‘There’s no disguising it, Paul,’ she said. ‘No way can you wriggle off the hook. You killed Becky. You murdered our daughter. You and Rose together, you’re every bit as guilty as Eddie Hull.’

  ‘Yeah, well, have it your way. What’s happened here on Connalough Point gives me the cover I needed to get rid of you. When I get back to the mainland I’ll tell the police we discovered their dirty game, but they came after us, you got shot in the process, I defended myself and was the only one to get out alive. You end up dead and I end up in the clear. I still get something out of this.’

  ‘And Rose? Don’t you feel anything for Rose?’

  He offered a shrug. ‘There’ll be others.’ He took aim with the shotgun.

  ‘I hate you,’ she said.

  ‘Tough.’

  ‘And I pity you.’ She stood straight-backed and faced him with a cold expression of acceptance on her dirtied face.

  ‘Bitch,’ he said, and pulled the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  ‘You’ve not been counting,’ she said. ‘You used your last cartridge on Matty, and I have the remainder.’ She bent down and picked up Douglas’s fallen shotgun. It was ungainly and weighty in her hands but she raised it so that Paul was fixed in her sights. ‘I ought to kill you for what you’ve done,’ she said icily. ‘For what you were about to do to me…’

  He held up a hand. ‘Easy, Susan, I can explain…’

  She fired the gun. It knocked her back. He yelled and shielded his face with his arm. But the shot had been deliberately aimed at the floor a few feet from his boots and it sent up a thick cloud of earth and stones.

  ‘What are you doing, you crazy bitch?’ he cried.

  She didn’t answer. Instead she aimed at the same spot and he shrank back before the blast. When he next opened his eyes he saw that a small crater had opened up in the floor in front of him. Susan dropped the shotgun down into the cave, the remaining cartridges following it. She bent and retrieved the lamp.

  ‘That was a foolish thing to do, Susan,’ Paul said. His face screwed up in rage, and he took a step forward. The floor gave and felt as if it would crumble at any moment. He stood back, startled. Too late he realised what she’d done by shooting at the floor. It had been weakened considerably by the twin blasts. ‘Where are you going?’

  Susan was creeping around the side of the hole, the ledge she stood on a mere foot wide. The smell of the sea wafted up to her from the gaping cave below.

  ‘Help me!’ screamed Douglas from the cave, his voice weak and pathetic. ‘Don’t leave me here! I’ll drown!’

  ‘You stay right there, Susan!’ demanded Paul, hardly daring to move from the spot. ‘You hear me?’

  Susan man
aged to get to the other side of the hole and to the chamber’s exit. She paused, turned around to face him. Lifted the lamp. ‘I’m getting out of here.’

  ‘I’ll never find my way out, not in the pitch black!’ Paul beseeched.

  ‘I don’t care.’ She turned on her heel and went out of the chamber leaving Paul in almost total darkness, save for the tiniest chink of light leaking up from the cave below.

  Paul took a breath and put a foot gingerly on the earth in front of him. A large hole, a foot wide, opened up and rocks crashed to the cave floor. Douglas yelped as the falling debris narrowly missed him. Paul stepped back, cowered against the wall, and then sank to his haunches. ‘Susan! Don’t leave me here! Susan! Susan!’

  Douglas took up the cry on knowing that Susan had left them both to their fate. Their combined voices echoed through the chambers and tunnels like the agonised shrieking of banshees. Soon, Susan couldn’t hear them at all.

  She threaded her way down the tunnels, until realisation hit her that she was completely lost. She had no idea which way was out, which way to turn. For half an hour she traversed the many passages and dead ends, finally ending up in a small-roofed chamber. The lamplight faltered as the oil began to run out.

  She sat down tiredly and started to cry, her emotions bubbling up savage and cutting as the full realisation of what she’d heard hit her. She didn’t care now whether she lived or died. She’d lost everything, even her faith in humanity. Crushed like a dry, brittle leaf. There was no use in trying to fight to hang onto life.

  With an agonised shiver, the flame inside the glass funnel of the lamp gasped its last and plunged her into total darkness.

  * * * *

  27

  Perfect Sense

  She felt fingers encircle her wrist, and she started in fear, trying to yank her hand free from whoever had her in their grip. But the hand was fastened around her slender wrist like a steel manacle.