Dead of Winter

by Sam Millar

  A stakeout at an abbatoir? Probably should rename it a steak-out.

  Unscrewing a thermal flask, Karl poured his fourth coffee of the night. He sipped it for the warmth. The liquid had gone to rot, tasting like foul ink.

  Suddenly, a loud tapping at the window startled him, making him spill a goodly amount of the coffee onto his crotch area.

  ‘For fuck sake!’

  A grinning face stared in at him.

  ‘What the hell are you doing!’ shouted Karl, staring back at the face, while cranking down the window. Almost immediately, the cold rain came rushing into the car, splattering his face.

  ‘Haven’t seen you about here before, big fella,’ replied the hooker, smiling. The rain was running off a battered umbrella in her hand and snaking down the sleeves of her jacket. She seemed immune to it. ‘I’m Joanie. You looking for a bit of warmth on this ball-freezing night?’

  ‘Thanks, Joanie, but my balls are warm enough right now thanks to all that coffee you made me spill on them.’

  ‘Don’t be like that. Want someone to rub your magic lamp?’ continued Joanie, undeterred. ‘See what we can conjure up?’

  ‘My genie’s nice and snug,’ replied Karl, now noticing that Joanie was more of a Johnny, with muscularly chiselled facial features. The masculine voice only added to the peculiarity.

  ‘Cum on. Don’t be like that,’ coaxed Joanie. ‘How can I get you to change your mind, honey?’

  Shaking his head, Karl said, ‘Honey, you aren’t wealthy enough, and I’m not desperate enough. Now, disappear before I forget my manners.’

  ‘Fuck you!’ shouted Joanie, spitting into Karl’s face.

  ‘Right. That does it!’ snarled Karl, quickly exiting the car. ‘I never hit a lady, but with you not being one, I’ll make an exception.’

  No sooner had the words left his mouth than the unexpected hit him: a punch to the chin so hard that his head snapped violently back.

  ‘This lady don’t take shit from no faggot-arse thug,’ Joanie said, batting the umbrella perfectly perfectly across the bridge of Karl’s nose.

  ‘Fuck!’ Karl instinctively brought his hand up to his nose. It was bleeding.

  ‘I’m going to teach you how to respect a lady!’ Joanie aimed the umbrella like a spear, before thrusting it towards Karl’s left eye.

  Barely managing to move out of the way, Karl balled his fist and connected awkwardly with Joanie’s forehead. She went staggering backwards into a pile of discarded cardboard boxes stuffed with rotten fruit.

  Down but not out, Joanie administered a spine-shattering kick to Karl’s balls, buckling him over like a flipped coin.

  ‘Ohhhh…’ moaned Karl, genuflecting to the ground like a monk saying matins.

  Almost immediately, eager fingers began rummaging through his pockets. He felt his gun being removed from the inside of his coat.

  ‘Don’t you fucking move!’ shouted Joanie, pointing the gun at Karl’s petrified face. Her hands were shaking.

  ‘Take…take it easy. You don’t want to–’

  ‘This’ll teach you to disrespect me!’ Joanie pulled the trigger. Click! Nothing. She pulled the trigger again. Click! Same result.

  ‘Please…’ Karl pleaded.

  ‘Faggot!’ Joanie shouted, escaping into the darkness with the gun.

  Minutes passed before Karl was able to stand, unsteadily, catching his breath, grateful for Joanie’s lack of understanding of guns; her inability to take the safety off.

  Warding off vertigo with deep gulps of air, his head suddenly felt lighter. He quickly checked his pockets. Wallet gone too.

  ‘Bastard…’ he hissed, easing back into the car, gingerly checking that his nose wasn’t broken.

  Less than ten minutes later, chalky headlights lit up the interior of the car, casting wilting shadows across Karl’s face. Then, just as suddenly, the darkness returned.

  Karl watched the blue Merc halt at the security gate for a few seconds, before the barriers eased upwards, permitting entry.

  Quickly leaving the car, Karl ran to the abattoir’s side entrance, and began working the key, given to him by Geordie, into the lock. It was proving stubborn.

  A leprous rat watched Karl’s edgy manoeuvres, its yellow eyes making him even more edgy.

  ‘Scat!’ The rat quickly disappeared under a deep scar in the ground.

  ‘Come on!’ mumbled Karl to the reluctant key, cold and adrenaline making it almost impossible to negotiate the tiny cavity.

  At last the key turned and the door opened.

  Inside the massive grounds, he could hear guard dogs barking in the distance. The sound made his stomach do involuntary flip-flops, despite being assured by Geordie that the dogs were primarily trained not to attack, only to frighten off would-be thieves. He had a problem with the word primarily. Too ambiguously grey. He also had a problem no longer having a gun, and debated whether to cancel out tonight, in favour of some other night, hopefully a lot more favourable.

  ‘Fuck it. Get it over with…’

  Making his way cautiously across the unruly expanse of tarmac and cement, he soon discovered there was little light, except what glowed from the tired moon silhouetting the different buildings into apocalyptic scenes of desolation and solitude. The night seemed to be closing in all around the abattoir, painting it darker and darker.

  Just like Karl’s mood.

  ‘It can’t get any worse, surely?’ he mumbled, resisting the urge to use the pocket torchlight in his pocket, thankful that thieving Joanie hadn’t liberated that, as well. ‘Where the hell is the abandoned tunnel?’

  The tension in his spine was horrendous. Every nerve in his body was tingling with adrenaline. He kept hearing Naomi’s voice questioning his actions. And what about this Georgina Goodman? You don’t even know her. What if she’s setting a trap? You read the newspaper archives about her and her insane sister and father. I told you I had a bad feeling about this…

  Naomi’s dire forecast – balanced against the uncertainty of whatever waited ahead – wasn’t helping the situation. The need to maintain a calm demeanour was paramount if he was to see this through.

  To his relief, the entrance to the abandoned tunnel came slowly into view. Covered in thick bushes and triffid-like weeds, he almost missed it.

  ‘What a fucking dump…’ he muttered, entering.

  Only now did Karl yield to the necessity to use the torchlight. His anxious face was a pale spot framed by the fragment of moonlight sneaking in through the broken stones marshalled all along the makeshift tunnel – the one-time pathway leading to the back of the abattoir. It had remained idle for years, after the crumbling stonework had fallen, killing one of the workers making his way home on a Saturday afternoon. Always a favourite shortcut with the workers, it now remained unused and condemned. Too dangerous.

  Old, corroded water pipes that ribbed the grey, peeling walls, hissed and spat in his face, blinding him periodically. He began sweating. Since the time of his mother’s murder, dark and claustrophobic spaces had always bothered him, and he was finding it extremely difficult to stay orientated or to regulate his breathing.

  A crafty wind came suddenly rushing down the tunnel, carrying a medley of nauseating animal stenches. Manure, muck and dead blood all banded together along the slimy floor of the tunnel. Karl could taste it in his mouth. Extremely unpleasant, it gave off some kind of vibration, like a tuning fork punctuated by too much feel. He felt his stomach heave, but managed to control it with sheer willpower.

  At last the side door leading to the main building came mercifully into view. A few seconds later, he was easing it open, slipping inside while extinguishing the light from the hand torch.

  The building appeared empty of people, even though lights were flickering, shapeless and indistinct, through frosted glass. In the distance, soft sounds of machinery hummed quietly, in sharp contrast to its normal daily grind.

  Quiet as a bloody tomb…

  A succession of steps guided
the way to the main floor, and Karl took them two at a time, silently, halting only to listen. His heart kept banging in his chest and eardrums.

  Less than five minutes later, he stepped onto the deserted main floor, and quickly tried orientating his bearings, hoping to chart some sort of direction from his mind’s map.

  Which way?

  Moving carefully, he headed along a corridor leading to the large doors of the main floor, thankful now of Talbot’s ghastly tour. The doors opened automatically, waiting for him to enter.

  It always baffled Karl – when watching the occasional horror movie with Naomi – how anyone could be so daft as to enter the haunted house. Any fool could see that nothing good would come of it. Yet, here he was, doing the exact same brainless action – albeit on a bloodier scale.

  He entered cautiously, expecting Vincent Price’s laughter to sound out, mocking him. Instead, he caught an unwelcome glimpse of the malevolent Slaughter Restraint lurking in the shadows. The huge device looked even more intimidating and appalling in diluted light. It seemed alive, like an enormous Venus flytrap waiting for a succulent victim to embrace.

  Proceeding up the last flight of stairs in the direction of the room above the Slaughter Restraint, Karl suddenly stopped dead in his tracks, alerted by a noise directly overhead.

  ‘Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…’ moaned a voice.

  What the fuck? Karl let his breath out carefully, so it couldn’t be heard.

  The voice continued moaning. ‘Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…’

  The moaning became louder, more urgent. Had someone hurt themselves on one of the machines? One of the night staff, perhaps?

  Debating whether to remain hidden or call out to the injured, Karl quickly realised he had no alternative other than to do the right thing.

  ‘Hello! Where are you? Give me some directions!’

  Nothing. The moaning had stopped. All he could hear was his own breathing.

  Moving cautiously up the staircase, he began using the shadows as cover, wishing he had his gun.

  ‘Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…’ The moaning suddenly commenced again. The sound seemed to be quivering. It was coming from inside the room above the Slaughter Restraint.

  ‘Hello? Where are you?’

  Deathly silence.

  Just as he halted outside the door, Karl spotted a red runnel of thick liquid beneath, partially gathering in a pool. The crimson diffusion slithered to where he stood, touching the lip of his shoes like a swarm of squashed tadpoles.

  The hairs on the back of his neck suddenly began spiking. Something wasn’t right, and he was standing right in the middle of that something.

  ‘Blood? Fuck…’ he muttered, seconds before something hit him hard across the back of the head, turning all lights off in his dark and bloody world.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  DEAD MAN’S SHOES

  ‘The unmentionable odour of death…’

  W.H. Auden, September 1, 1939

  Karl slowly awoke from a foggy stupor in a dimly lit room, feeling as weak as dead man’s piss. His throbbing head seemed to have been cleft open. He reached to touch the wound, only to discover that his hands were tied firmly behind his back.

  A fractured mirror on the wall shockingly revealed that he was inverted, naked, hovering directly over the evil-looking Slaughter Restraint. His feet were secured at the ankles. A bloody rag filled his mouth, which was taped shut. The pupils of his eyes had gone bloodshot, resembling deep wounds. The scars of boyhood horror that covered his body looked like a giant map of the world in the dull light.

  He shivered. A mixture of foreboding and cold. He had never felt so cold in all his life. A large wall clock ticked loudly in his upside-down world. With difficulty, he figured he had been unconscious for at least twenty minutes. Thirty at the most.

  His eyes began scanning the room. Bulky blocks of foul-looking meat were pyramided in corners, wet with blood. A large metal counter in the centre of the room resembled an operating table, pieces of newly hacked meat on top. Bloody utensils rested beside the chunks of meat. With sudden horror, Karl realised that the meat was human.

  Three figures covered in bloody overalls and wearing facial masks stood a small distance away, mingling in the shadows, whispering. One glanced at Karl before touching the others, as if in a warning.

  Seconds later, the same figure approached, stopping directly beside Karl before pressing a button ensconced in the wall.

  Karl suddenly felt his body moving upwards, jostled by some unseen device. It sounded like rusted chain.

  ‘I’m going to take the rag from your mouth and ask you some questions,’ said the man, voice muffled, a serrated knife in his hand. ‘If you try and scream, I’ll gladly remove a finger. Lie, and I’ll remove something a lot more personal. Nod if you understand.’

  The stench of the bloody rag was burrowing all the way to Karl’s stomach. He wanted to throw up. It was difficult nodding upside-down. He did his best.

  ‘Good,’ said Knifeman, ripping the tape off, before removing the bloody rag.

  ‘Arghhhhhhhhhhhh!’ Karl felt as if his lips had been torn from his face. He quickly began sucking in great gulps of air, choking on its taste.

  ‘Why have you no ID?’ asked Knifeman, pressing the knife against Karl’s nose.

  Knifeman had young eyes. Untested by the world. The kind of eyes that made Karl nervous.

  ‘I…it was stolen from me, less than an hour ago. I was attacked by a woman.’ Karl suddenly became aware of the mutilated corpse, several feet away, brains squeezed from the skull like puréed strawberries. The corpse’s bloody face seemed to be looking straight at him, a resigned smirk on its face.

  ‘Attacked, by a woman?’ snarled Knifeman, mockingly.

  ‘I meant a man. A man stole it from me. A cross-dressing prostitute.’

  ‘Very original.’ Knifeman began pressing a smaller button on the wall.

  Karl immediately felt his body being slowly lowered into the Slaughter Restraint. A sound of steel clanging, and he was jerked roughly to the side. His battered head banged against metal. He began moving in slow motion, rotating at an awkward angle like a hog on a spit, bringing him closer and closer to the face of the corpse anchored below.

  ‘What…what’re you doing?’ Karl tried controlling the panic in his voice.

  Knifeman said nothing, all the while continuing to rotate Karl’s body.

  Karl was certain the tiny stepping-stones of his spine were popping out from their enclosure.

  ‘Fuck!’ He began gritting his teeth. The pain was becoming unbearable.

  For twenty long seconds Karl’s battered body rotated, then stopped. His nose was touching the corpse’s head. The dead man’s skin felt rubbery and damp, making Karl shudder. Ears were missing from the face, along with parts of the right cheek. A horrible jigsaw face.

  In his mind, Karl started replacing the missing parts of the fleshy puzzle. When he was done, there was little doubt in his mind that the bloody head had once rested on the shoulders of Thomas Blake.

  Almost immediately, a warm reek of bile sat in Karl’s throat like a piece of badly swallowed apple. He wanted to throw up again.

  Knifeman’s hands suddenly grasped Karl’s head, positioning it in a half-moon clasp.

  Karl immediately thought of a guillotine. Tried struggling. No use. His head eased backwards, exposing his neck. Talbot’s grisly words rushed at him: They cut the cow’s throat with a great big bloody knife called a hallaf.

  Panicking, Karl began squirming like a worm on the end of a line. Without warning, a set of wooden vice-like clamps squeezed tightly against his head and body, stopping all movement.

  ‘Bastards! Filthy murdering bastards! You’ll not get away with this!’

  ‘If you scream again, I’ll punish you in such a way you’ll never want to scream again,’ said Knifeman, calmly, running a hand smoothly over Karl’s exposed neck. Knifeman could easily have been a barber, carefully checking the facial terrain of one of his r
egulars. ‘I’ll ask you one more time. Why have you no ID?’

  ‘I’ve already told you the fucking truth, you sick bastard! It was stolen from me!’

  Knifeman reached for Karl’s hand. ‘First, I’m going to remove your index finger…’

  ‘No! It’s the truth!’ exclaimed Karl, trying desperately to ball his hand into a protective shell. ‘Outside the abattoir I was accosted and–’

  ‘How many others have you brought with you?’

  ‘Others…? There are no others. I’m…I’m on my own. I swear.’

  ‘Liar. You’d swear your mother’s life away,’ hissed Knifeman, finally securing one of Karl’s fingers.

  ‘I’m a private investigator, for fuck sake!’ shouted Karl, feeling the coldness of the knife on his index finger.

  ‘I warned you not to lie!’

  Just as Karl waited for his finger to be chopped, another man emerged from the shadow. Even though most of the man’s face was masked, Karl suspected it was Tev Steinway.

  ‘Wait!’ commanded Steinway’s muffled voice, directing his stare at Karl. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Kane…Karl Kane…’

  ‘Kane?’ A flicker of recognition seemed to appear in Steinway’s penetrating eyes. ‘How do I know you’re telling the truth?’

  ‘Why would I lie? My car’s parked in the wasteland, at the side of the abattoir. You can’t mistake it. It’s a silver Ford Cortina GT, originally used in “The Sweeney” TV show. You can’t miss it. Take my keys. They’re inside my coat pocket.’ Karl gritted his teeth. His back felt ready to snap. ‘Go check the glove compartment. You’ll find a load of my business cards and some other scraps of ID.’

  Steinway seemed to be weighing up Karl’s words. He waited a few seconds before speaking to Knifeman. ‘Take his keys. See what you can find.’

  ‘He’s lying. Can’t you see he’s just stalling for time? He’s after the blood money.’

  ‘What blood money?’ asked Karl, hoping his face didn’t betray him.