Philip Brennan 03-Cage of Bones

by Tania Carver

  ‘Look at that,’ he said. ‘The date. Couple of weeks ago. Recent … ’

  The bad feeling Cam had been harbouring increased. ‘Let’s get out of here, Gav. Come on. This … this isn’t right.’

  Gav frowned angrily, fighting the fear inside himself, not wanting to show it. ‘Bollocks. Just some old tramp or somethin’ been dossin’ down here. Come on.’ He pointed to the door. ‘What’s in there?’

  ‘Toilet?’

  ‘Open it.’

  Cam, sweating now, turned the handle.

  It wasn’t a toilet. It was another flight of stairs, this time leading down. The darkness sucked away what light there was like a black hole.

  ‘Gav … ’

  Cam stood back to let Gav see. Gav drew level. The two of them in the cramped kitchen filled it, made the place seem claustrophobic. Gav shone the torch into the dark stairwell. The two of them looked at other.

  ‘Go on then,’ said Gav, licking his lips.

  Dry from the steroids, thought Cam. Or fear.

  Cam opened his mouth, wanted to complain, but knew it would be no use. Putting his hand out to steady himself against the wall, he began to make his way downwards.

  The wall was clammy, cold. He felt damp flaking plaster and paint beneath his palm. The steps creaked as he placed his feet on them, felt soft at times.

  He reached the bottom. Felt hard-packed earth beneath his boots, a low ceiling above his head. The smell was worse down here; corruption allied to a pervasive dampness that made his skin itch and tingle unpleasantly.

  He crouched and looked round. Saw shadow on shadow. Behind him, Gav started to move down the stairs, swinging the beam of his torch as he did so. Cam caught flashes of illumination, made out something at the far end of the cellar.

  ‘What … what’s that?’ He pointed. Gav stopped descending, stayed where he was on the stairs.

  ‘What’s what?’

  ‘Over there, it’s … ’

  Something glimpsed in the beam’s swinging light. Quickly, then gone. A construction of some sort, criss-cross.

  And behind it, within it, some kind of movement.

  ‘Come on,’ said Gav, ‘let’s get out of here.’

  ‘Just a minute.’ Cam surprised himself with the strength in his voice. His heart was hammering, blood pounding round his body, but fear or no fear, he wanted to know what he had seen.

  ‘What d’you mean, just a minute? Come on, we’re goin’.’

  ‘Wait.’ Cam’s voice, stronger now. ‘Point the torch over there, in the corner.’

  ‘Why?’ Panic creeping into Gav’s voice now.

  ‘Because there’s something over there.’

  Gav, grumbling, reluctantly did so. The beam illuminated a cage, built into one whole wall of the cellar. The bars were the colour of stained teeth, tied together with what looked like strips of old leather.

  ‘Jesus … ’ Gav tried to back away, found he couldn’t move. ‘A cage … What’s … what’s a cage doin’ down here?’

  Cam didn’t answer. He didn’t know the answer. Fascinated, he started to move towards it.

  ‘Where you goin’?’

  ‘Just … I saw something … ’ Cam kept walking. Slowly. ‘Keep the torch pointed at the cage. Let me see … ’

  Something moved in the corner. Shifted. A shadow with substance and bulk.

  ‘There’s somethin’ in there … ’ Gav, no longer hiding the fear in his voice.

  Cam stopped walking. Stood rooted to the spot, staring. He glanced round, back to Gav.

  ‘Keep the torch there.’

  Cam reached the cage. Extended a hand, touched it. The smell was worse in this corner. Animal waste, plus corruption. The bars themselves stank. Cam leaned in close, smelled them. Like old bones in a butcher’s shop.

  He froze.

  Old bones. That was exactly what they were.

  ‘Come on! I’m goin’.’

  The beam wavered as Gav turned, indicated the way back upstairs.

  ‘Give me a minute,’ Cam shouted back.

  ‘I just want to—’ He didn’t get to say what he wanted to do. With a clanking rattling of chains, the thing in the cage sprang at the bars, roaring. It grabbed Cam by the arm, the neck.

  Cam screamed, tried to pull away. Couldn’t. The grip was too strong.

  He tried to shout for Gav to help him, but the words came out as one solid block of noise.

  The pain increased. He looked down, saw that the thing in the cage had sunk its teeth into his arm.

  Cam screamed even louder.

  Suddenly he was in the dark. Gav had left him, run back up the stairs, taking the torch with him.

  Cam felt the teeth bite further into his arm, accompanied by a snarl, like a hungry dog feasting. He grabbed his own neck, felt fingers digging in, tried to prise them away.

  The snarling increased.

  Cam pulled harder on the fingers. Felt something snap.

  An animal howl of pain. The grip on his arm loosened slightly.

  He pulled another finger back. Heard another snap.

  The grip on his arm slackened, the pain eased.

  Realising that he wouldn’t get another chance, Cam pulled as hard as he could. His neck was freed, then his arm. Not bothering to look behind him, he ran for the stairs.

  All the way up, not caring if they gave way underneath him, just desperate to be out of the house.

  Then, once upstairs, straight through the kitchen, the main room and out of the door.

  And running.

  As far away from the house as possible.

  Because, before Gav had taken the torch and run, Cam had seen what was there.

  A child. A feral child.

  In a cage of bones.

  3

  Faith ran.

  Through the trees, into the forest. Squinting at the sudden daylight, pushing herself as hard as she could, running as fast as she was able. The ground hard and uneven beneath her bare feet, her chest hammering. Arms windmilling wildly, breath barked out in ragged, harsh bursts. Anything to gain momentum, move faster.

  Get away from him.

  Escape from him.

  She ran on. Not knowing where she was going, not stopping to think. This way and that. Wherever there was a clearing between the trees, a space large enough to force herself through, she went. Just trying to put as much distance as possible between herself and …

  Him.

  Her feet were cut by branches and stones, the soles searing anew with pain each time she landed them hard on the forest floor. Branches and vines slapped at her. Stung. Brambles and thorns tore at her skin, tried to slow her down, pull her back. Claim her for the forest. She ignored them, fought them off. Told herself she felt nothing. No pain, no agony. She would have time for that later. Once she had put distance between herself and …

  Faith reached a clearing, slowed down. Hands on thighs, bent double, head down, she gulped in air as hard as she could. No good. She tried, but her body couldn’t do it. Her lungs were burning, seared, but not big enough to take in the amount of air she needed. She cursed herself for being so unfit. For smoking and drinking and not taking any exercise. A pleading mantra ran through her head:

  Pleasegodletmegetoutofthis … pleaseplease … please … Ipromise … please … IpromiseIpromise … I’llbeI’llbe … anythingjust …Iwon’tIwon’t … please …

  Eyes screwed tight shut, she concentrated.

  Pleasepleaseplease …

  She saw Ben in her mind’s eye. Her son. Smiling at her. Like an image from a different world. She’d left Donna to look after him. Gone to work.

  And how had she got from there to here? How had she got into this? How? She knew. She had thought she had been clever. Standing in New Town, her usual spot. Making it look like a pick-up, like work. Knowing it was anything but. Feeling a bit protected thinking he’d be on CCTV somewhere.

  And then the drive. Faith was used to getting into men’s cars. She knew the risks. But wit
h the insurance she’d put in place, she’d doubted there was much risk in this one. Not for her, anyway. Because Donna would know what to do. Faith could count on Donna.

  But he had hit the town limits and kept going. She had asked him where, and he had told her. Somewhere private. Somewhere they could talk. Where he could get what he wanted and she could get what she wanted.

  Yeah, she had thought. Heard that one before.

  But it hadn’t worked out like that. Not at all.

  He had taken her somewhere private, all right. Then … nothing. Until she woke up. In that place. That horrible place. Like something from a horror film. Cold. And dark. And …

  Oh God.

  The bones. She remembered the bones.

  And in that moment she knew where he had taken her.

  Back there. Back home.

  And she had let him. She was so cross with herself for allowing herself to make such a stupid, simple mistake that her anger gave her the energy to attempt to escape. And she had. She wasn’t stupid. She knew what he had done. One look at that place told her that. If she stayed, she would have no future.

  So she had run. Not stopping to look back, or pause to check where she was. Not even noticing she was naked. Just ran. Out into the forest, the open. It was daylight by that time. She had been there all night.

  Faith straightened up. Listened. Tried to hear something beyond her own ragged breath. Some sound of her pursuer.

  Nothing.

  Her body relaxed. Air came more freely into her. Her heart rose slightly. She began to feel the pain in her body. Feel normal again.

  Then she heard it. The crack of dry twigs. Footfalls. Heavy. Not caring whether she heard or not. Knowing he was going to find her. She couldn’t stay where she was. She had to keep moving.

  Looking round, she quickly decided where the sound was coming from, turned and headed in the opposite direction.

  Her feet hammering down hard on the earth, pain starting anew, body racked and burning, feeling worse for stopping, not better.

  And on. Running, running, running. Arms pumping, legs pounding. Not stopping. Not looking back. Moving forward, ever forward. Her son in her mind’s eye. Running towards him.

  And then … other sounds. In front of her, not behind her.

  She slowed, nearly stopping. Listened again, tried to make them out over the top of her laboured, painful breathing.

  She knew what the sounds were. She smiled.

  Traffic.

  She was near to a road.

  Smiling, she ran all the harder.

  Then: another sound. Behind her this time.

  She risked a glance over her shoulder. And there he was.

  Faith hadn’t expected him to move so fast, given the size of him. But he was barrelling towards her, knocking branches out of the way as though they weren’t there. Like that Vinnie Jones character in the X-Men film she had watched once with her son.

  ‘Oh no, oh God … ’

  She ran all the harder. Away from him. Towards the traffic.

  The forest floor began to slope downwards. There was an incline leading towards the road. Faith ran down it. Brambles and thorns were thick here. They tore at her, attempted to hold her back. She ignored them, refused to feel her arms, legs, as they were ripped open. Some snagged her, refusing to give way. She kept on running, letting them gouge out large lumps of bleeding flesh.

  No time for that. Only for escape. Escape …

  The road was in sight. The cars speeding past. She could see them. And, in a few seconds, touch them. Her feet ran all the faster.

  And then, just as she was about to break free from the thorns, he was on her.

  She screamed, tried to pull away. Felt his hot breath on her neck. His strong, meaty, sweaty grip on her shoulders. Fingers like heavy metal bolts digging into her skin.

  She screamed again. Knowing she couldn’t match him in strength, she became an eel, twisting and writhing away from his grip. Something she had picked up years ago, used when a customer tried to get a bit too handy. There was another move she knew too.

  Squirming and turning in his grasp, she managed to bring her heel up, right into his groin. He might be big and strong, she thought, but there was no way he wouldn’t feel that.

  And he did. Grunting, he loosened his grip slightly.

  It was all Faith needed. She pushed her body sharply back against him, knocking him off balance, releasing his grip further, then ran.

  Towards the road.

  She reached the kerb, glanced back. He was following. She allowed herself a small smile of triumph.

  She had escaped. Got away. Yes, she—

  Didn’t see the VW Passat coming round a blind corner, straight towards her.

  Too fast to stop or change direction.

  It hit her, sending her body into the windscreen, shattering it, then over the roof of the car, landing in the road behind, her pelvis shattering, twisting the lower part of her body away from the top. The next car, a BMW 4x4, tried to swerve and missed her torso, but wasn’t as lucky with her legs. The thick tyres crushed them as the driver slammed on the brakes.

  Faith had no idea what had happened. No time to think. All she saw was daylight, the sky far away, yet near at hand. Then her son’s face once more, smiling at her. Like an image from another world.

  And a few seconds later, it was.

  4

  Whenever Detective Inspector Phil Brennan thought he had seen every kind of horror that humans could inflict on humans, something would hit him with the force of a right hook to the gut to remind him that he hadn’t. And that he would never fail to be surprised and sickened, no matter how long he lived.

  When he looked into that cellar and saw the cage, he felt that blow to the gut once more.

  ‘Oh my God … ’

  As DI with Essex Police’s Major Incident Squad – MIS – he had witnessed on a regular basis the damaged and the deranged destroy themselves and others with tragic inevitability. Seen loving family homes mutate into abattoirs. Comforted victims whose lives had ended even though they still lived. Attended crime scenes so horrific they gave a glimpse of hell.

  And this ranked as one of the worst.

  Not because of the usual stuff. Gore and dismemberment. Emotion and anger made corporeal. A savage and senseless loss of life. Here, the passion and rage of murder was absent. Although he imagined it would have been there in time. No. This was a different kind of horror. A calculated, deliberate horror. Thoughtful and precise and vicious.

  The worst kind.

  Phil stood on the hard-packed dark earth and stared at it, shivering from more than just the cellar’s cold.

  Arc lights had been hastily erected at either wall, dispelling the Hammer Films gloom, replacing it with deadeningly bright illumination that revealed everything, conversely making it all the more horrific in the process.

  The blue-suited CSI team worked in the glare of the lights. They were all around him, attempting to spin samples and specimens into the slenderest of narrative threads, building the biggest story from the smallest particles.

  Phil himself was similarly dressed, standing still and staring. Taking in what was before him. Trying to process it. Knowing he would have to hunt down the person responsible for it.

  The cellar floor was strewn with flower petals. The arc lights showed up the varying colours: blue, red, white, yellow. All turning brown, curling, dying. All from different kinds of flowers. Around the walls were bunches of wilting blooms, bound together, placed in clusters at regular intervals, like little roadside memorials. The smell, in that small space, was overpowering.

  Above them, daubed on the walls, were symbols. Swirling and Cabalistic. Phil had initially thought they were some kind of pentagram, an indication of devil worship. But he had examined them more closely and found that wasn’t the case. They weren’t like any Satanic designs he had come across. He couldn’t say what they were, but they made him feel uncomfortable looking at them. As though he
had seen them before and knew what they were. And didn’t like them. He shuddered, kept looking round.

  In the centre of the space was what looked like a workbench. Wooden surface, with adjustable metal legs. Old. Well used, but well looked after. Phil leaned forward, examined it. It had been kept clean, but the wood was stained darker in places, the surface scarred and chipped with blade marks and heavy, angry gashes. He suppressed a shudder.

  And there, behind the bench, at the far end of the cellar, was the cage. He moved closer, stood before it like an astronaut confronted by an alien artefact, unsure whether to worship it or destroy it. It took up nearly a third of the cellar. Floor to wall to ceiling. The bones embedded, cemented. Bound tightly together with what looked like some kind of hide. Varying in size, but all quite long and substantial. Precisely worked and integrated. A solid construction, criss-crossing to form neat, even-sized squares. It had been there a long time. Some of the bones were worn and smooth, time-leached from white to grey. Some were much newer, almost white. And it had been well maintained over the years. Sections had been repaired, the newer, paler bones standing out, at odds with the rest. Old, splintered ones strengthened and bound. A smaller frame set into the larger one served as a door, hinged on one side by bindings, a chain and padlock securing it on the other side.

  The bones … Their selection based on size and shape … The method of joining them together … He tried to imagine the work involved, the time taken, the kind of mind that had created such a thing … Failed. Shook his head, concentrated, examined it all the harder.

  ‘Built to last, that.’ A voice at Phil’s side. ‘British craftsmanship.’

  He turned. DS Mickey Philips was standing next to him. The flippancy of his tone was only perfunctory. It didn’t reach Mickey’s eyes. He was equally awed and repelled by the structure.

  ‘Why bone?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Must be a reason, Mickey. Whoever did this must be telling us something.’

  ‘Yeah. But what?’

  ‘I don’t know. But they could have used wood, metal, whatever. They chose bone. Why?’