by Leona Turner
The bank statement confirmed what she had feared: he was leaving her.
Caught up in her own woes, she failed to notice that he’d made no transactions within the last week.
Chapter 21
Richard stared at the computer screen in rapt enthusiasm. It made him look peculiar; enthusiasm was not an expression often found on Richard’s face. He usually wore a look of indifference, or, worse still, arrogance—the arrogance of youth, coupled with the belief that he held all the answers to the mysteries of life
Richard was a goth. The usual belief of immortality that most teenagers subscribed to was compounded by the goths’ love of all things macabre. The idea that even if death were to come it would somehow merely see him as one of its own and move on.
Richard loved the way people would cross the street to avoid him; it made him feel important, almost akin to a reputation that a gangster would possess, the only difference being that it was his appearance that alarmed people. He had long, straggly black hair that hadn’t met with shampoo in at least three months. His face was naturally quite long, and after a few heavy nights of drinking and taking drugs he took on the pale, gaunt look of the living dead. He still lived at home, to his own annoyance, and his mother would continually berate him about not washing often enough and how he was ‘throwing his life away’. He just ignored her, like he did everyone. She should just accept him for what he was.
The reason, however, for this sudden change in Richard’s expression, was the chat he’d been having in a goth chat room to a girl who called herself “Queen of the Damned.”
Richard was obsessed with the film by the same name, and from the replies he was getting, this girl seemed just as into him.
He allowed himself a little smile—something that would have been previously unheard—to grace his lips. She told him to meet her at eight o’clock outside The Tin Whistle.
Richard started to get ready; he had only half an hour to get ready and get there in time. He turned to the mirror in his room and began the ritual of applying his makeup. Richard always used the same ‘mask’ whenever going out: white face paint, black lipstick, and heavily lined lids that accentuated his paleness. Noticing his nail varnish was chipped, he filled it in quickly with a permanent black marker he kept in his bedroom for emergencies. Lastly, he grabbed the small plastic bag full of mushrooms and headed for the door. His mother walked into the hall as the front door slammed closed behind him.
Richard arrived outside The Tin Whistle at eight o’clock precisely and was met by a small girl with a pale face, dark red lips, and short, spiky black hair. He couldn’t believe his luck. She introduced herself as Katy and they went in. It was as always hot and sticky inside. Richard fought his way to the bar while Katy went to find a table. Richard had already decided that the situation called for spirits and had ordered double tequilas for them both, paying the barmen he found Katy sat at a table at the back of the bar.
The conversation had started pretty much where they left off; they had discussed most of their favourite films by eleven o’clock. Both of them were drunk and after another double helping of tequila they were both ready to leave. When Richard had shown Katy the mushrooms, she had laughed and invited him to a party she was going on to after. The party was happening at a house that was only a fifteen-minute walk from the pub. Richard stopped at the gents’ before leaving, where he took a couple of handfuls of mushrooms. Twenty minutes later he was out of his head. Katy, having grown tired of his continual giggling, had given him the address and relieved him of the mushrooms before going on ahead. He staggered out of the pub onto the street in his, propping himself up against the side of the building he stared up and then down the street, trying to remember the directions. After a few minutes, and still none the wiser, he decided that going right seemed to be the best idea. Turning he started down the street.
When the car pulled up next to him, he didn’t notice it at first. Someone got out of the car and came straight up to him.
“It’s Richard, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” he replied, grinning wildly. Richard couldn’t be sure if what he was seeing was real or not, but it looked like this guy was wearing a mask. He decided it didn’t matter; it was probably the mushrooms.
“Are you going to the party?”
“Yeah, can’t remember where it is, though.” He started to laugh again.
“I can give you a lift if you like—jump in.”
“Cheers.” And with that he got in the car, happy in the knowledge he no longer had to worry about finding directions. He could relax and was free to gaze out at the shadows being cast by the streetlights as they streaked past. Richard could feel his eyelids getting heavy, he slowly turned his head to look at the driver who’d been kind enough to offer him a lift. He was mildly surprised to find the driver looking back at him.
When Richard woke, he felt terrible. He’d thrown up all down himself, but worse than that, he realised he was still coming down.
Christ! It smells like shit in here. He couldn’t pinpoint the smell, but it kept making him gag. He stared wildly around him, trying to make sense of where he was, but it wasn’t anywhere he recognised. He had woken up in questionable places before, but he’d always known whose house he was at or at least there would be someone he knew next to him.
This time, though, was different; there were no familiar sights, sounds, or, for that matter, people. He was alone. He tried to move and couldn’t, and he looked down to see what was preventing his departure. He was alarmed to find he was duct taped to a wheelchair. As his mind tried to adjust to process the incoming information, he started to panic. Only a little at first, but as he properly ingested the information that he was helpless, the panic started to rise.
Then he had a thought: maybe this wasn’t real; maybe it was a cruel prank that his mates had decided to pull at the last minute. Or maybe he was dreaming, stuck in a maddening nightmare. Then he threw up again. Well, that confirmed he wasn’t in a nightmare. He started to try to work out where he was. It seemed that he was in some sort of derelict barn; the wind was blowing through, chilling him to the bone. And yet even with the strong wind he could still smell that nauseating stench—it wasn’t dissipating. He was starting to feel sick and was becoming increasingly paranoid; his mind seemed to have turned against him, coming up with all sorts of scary scenarios to tease and torment him. He decided the best course of action, seeing as there was no alternative, was to sit and wait.
After what seemed like an age, someone came into the room he was seemingly incarcerated in. Hearing the footsteps, Richard decided to call out.
“Listen, I don’t know what the fuck you think you’re doing, but you better get your arse over here and untie me right fucking now!”
Richards’s anger bubbled over as he continued.
“I don’t know who put you up to this, but let me tell you something. Once my mates and I have finished with you, you’re gonna wish you’d never set eyes on me.”
The stranger quietly walked up behind Richard then stepped in front of him so he could see his captor properly.
Richard took a sharp breath in. Standing in front of him was a cloaked figure. But that wasn’t what had taken his breath away.
The figure had a pale cherubic face, which obviously a mask; it was completely white but for a few homemade amendments. The lips were black, looking like a gash in an otherwise perfectly angelic face. As his eyes travelled up the contours of the face they stopped as he noticed another, obviously intentional, flaw. On one cheek of the mask, crudely painted on, was a single tear. It was a cruel parody of his own tears, which were now flowing freely down his face.
The mask spoke.
“Why are you crying?”
“Why do you think, you freak? You’re the one who’s been tearing people up all over town aren’t you? I don’t want to die—please, please let me go. I won’t tell anyone, I swear.”
Richard’s voice was pleading between sobs.
; “Begging Richard? That doesn’t exactly fit with the hardened, indifferent image you strive so hard to achieve. Anyway, I intend to teach.’
“Teach? What do you want to teach me?”
“I’d like to teach you about death.”
“Why?”
“Why not? I mean, you seem obsessed with it, and you study it almost religiously, if you’d excuse the turn of phrase. Now Richard, you spend all this time emulating death, and I want to help you, so I’m going to teach you all about death.”
The mask moved out of his line of sight once more, and all of a sudden he was moving swiftly, and in what seemed to be one fluid movement, he was facing the opposite side of the room. His eyes were drawn to something on the floor, and in a sudden, violent instant, he knew what the smell had been.
Unable to control himself, his body tried to evacuate. When he’d finally managed to get a grip on himself, he forced his eyes to travel back to the body once more. He recognised it instantly as that of the man who’d gone missing over a week ago.
What was his name? Jon. Jon something or other. Jon…
“Jon Hamilton.” As if reading his mind, the mask spoke.
“Is he…is he…?”
“Dead? Yes. I really thought you’d have known that, though.” The voice had a chastising quality to it.
“It seems you still have a lot to learn about death. Well, why put off ‘til tomorrow what you can do today? That’s what my mother always said, anyway.” With that, the mask leaned over him, clamping a damp rag over his nose and mouth. With his arms bound, there was nothing Richard could do.
He tried to hold his breath, but the masked man had anticipated this, and a gloved hand stroked his face as the stranger’s gentle voice started to speak.
“Try to relax, Richard; it’ll all be over soon.”
Knowing there was nothing he could do, his lungs screaming at him, he took a few gasps of air.
Sometime later, Richard stirred once again. He could feel pressure all across the front of his body, and he was lying on the cold floor. His arms had been tied round something in front of him, and something cold and spongy was on top of him. As he slowly opened his eyes, he let out a high-pitched, primal scream. Directly in front of him, Jon Hamilton’s glazed, milky eyes stared back at his. Up close he could see the discolouration on his face; it looked as if someone had prised his mouth open after death had got hold of him, and now there was a fetid smell emanating As Richard tried to kick out and push the body away he realised he was tied to a pole, which was thwarting any efforts he made. But as he moved, a soft, rasping breath escaped the dead body on top of him. This was the last straw, as far as Richard was concerned, and he threw up again and started to cry.
The cloaked figure watched Richard from the other side of the room, once Richard was spent the figure moved slowly toward him. Richard cried out, trying in vain to sound angered as opposed to frightened, but unfortunately the wavering in his voice gave him away.
“You freak! Let me up from here right now, right fucking now…”
His voice trailed off as another gasp of air escaped Mr. Hamilton.
“Please, please, let me go, I won’t tell anyone—who’d believe me anyway?”
“Oh, dear Richard, we’re missing the point, aren’t we? I’m doing this for your own good. You’ll learn everything you need to know about death within the next few hours, days, weeks, hell, I’m not even sure how long this will take.” The last bit was said jovially as if this was some kind of bizarre experiment that was to culminate in an exciting discovery.
“Why me? What did I ever do to you?”
“It’s not what you did to me, Richard. There are so many reasons you’re here now, none of which I particularly care to share with you.”
“But why me?” His voice regained a little strength.
“Why you? Well, why anyone, really? So many people have such little say in what happens to them in their lives. People lose people they love every day through disease and accidents that they had no control over. And to them death is something to be respected. They have a personal insight into what death holds; it’s not something to be emulated and mocked by people like you who’ve never felt the pain of loss. You and your ilk pass drugs around, introducing them to the most vulnerable people in society without any concern for the consequences. People get hurt—or sometimes worse—by your actions, but still you don’t care, still the indifference.”
“So you’re teaching me that lesson by strapping me to this?” Richard nodded toward the body on top of him.
“Yes, I’m afraid I can’t take credit for the ingenuity of it, though—I got the idea from the Etruscans.”
“Who?”
“The Etruscans. Really, Richard, for one so arrogant you really are painfully stupid.”
Ordinarily Richard would have had a row with anyone who dared to call him stupid, but now he feared that perhaps his abductor had a point. He had, after all, gotten willingly into the car.
“The Etruscans were in Rome before the Romans. They were pirates, basically, for want of a better word. They did this to their own when they stepped out of line, the idea being that one may inhale death from a dead body. Personally, I can’t see how it would work, I suppose no food or water and a dead body strapped to you; I imagine it’s a pretty nasty way to die, but I suppose time will tell.”
And with that, the masked stranger turned and walked away, Richard’s screams of protest and disgust punctuating the night air.
Chapter 22
As the two uniformed policemen pulled up outside Joanne Hamilton’s house, they gave each other a sideways glance; neither of them relished the thought of what they had to do now. They had agreed this was definitely the worst part of their job. Letting out synchronised sighs, they got out of the car and made their way up the path to the front door, ringing the doorbell. They straightened themselves up as they waited for the door to be opened.
This was the young PC Bannerman’s thirteenth month on the job, and from what he’d seen in the last twenty-eight days, he was starting to wonder if it might be his last. Nothing they’d taught him during training had prepared him for what he’d seen in that disused council lockup on the industrial estate four weeks ago. He still felt ill whenever he thought back to it, and he’d not had one decent night’s sleep since. Now here he was, on the doorstep of another potential victim’s house, and he was about to tell some poor woman that one of her husband’s digits had been found in an ice-lolly at her husband’s mistress’s house.
Again, no training for that, either; he’d received training in how to break the news of death to relatives, but what body did they have? A finger. A finger doesn’t necessarily mean that the man was dead, so what were they going to say?
“Hi, Mrs. Hamilton, I’m afraid we have some bad news. Someone’s relieved your husband of a finger and we were wondering if you could formally identify it? We have a positive ID from his mistress, who incidentally found it an ice-lolly she’d been sucking on at the time. No, I’m afraid we can’t be sure if the rest of him is dead or not, but once the police examiners have finished with the finger, we will release it back to you and if we find the rest of him, we’ll be sure to let you know.”
No, this was all wrong, this wasn’t why he’d joined the force—so some sick creep could play games with him.
P.C Bannerman was brought soundly back to Earth by the sound of a key in the door in front of them. As the door slowly opened, his eyes met the pale, drawn face of a lady who had clearly been very attractive in her day but had obviously let herself go. There were dark rings around her eyes, her dark blonde hair, streaked with grey, was lying limply round her face, and she was still in a dressing gown.
“How can I help you, Officer?” Her voice was strong, despite her appearance. PC Bannerman spoke then.
“Mrs Joanne Hamilton?” She nodded her response.
“I’m afraid we have some news concerning your husband—would it be possible to come in for a min
ute?”
“Yes, yes, he’s not here, though, never is these days. I haven’t seen him in over a week; he even missed Harry’s birthday.”
“Harry?” PC Bannerman queried.
“Oh, sorry, Harry’s our son. Sixteen he is now. Would you like a cup of tea?”
“No thank you, Mrs Hamilton. About your husband, I think it might be best if you sat down.”
As if hearing him for the first time, Joanne swung about to face him.
“Listen, Constable, I believe my husband’s left me; I always knew the day would come, but I’m still in shock, so unless he’s dead I have no interest in anything he’s done, whether past, present, or future. He hasn’t been my husband for a very long time, always running around with any bit of skirt that caught his eye, but he crossed the line when he missed his son’s birthday. I know he’s been seeing someone else and I also know that he’s left me—of course the coward couldn’t tell me to my face, he wanted me to find out for myself.”
The verbal tirade stunned Bannerman, and he mentally cursed the forces that had brought him into the middle of this shit storm. He stared calmly back at her and spoke gently.
“So he didn’t tell you he was leaving you?”
“No.”
“How do you know he left you, then?”
“‘Cause I found out he’s put a deposit down on a house, and I know it’s not for us, because he never mentioned moving. So come on, out with it, what has my dearest gone and done, anyway?”
“Well, I’m afraid it’s not anything he’s done. Earlier on today we had a call from a distraught woman saying she’d found something that belonged to your husband at her apartment.”
“Yes? So what does that have to do with me, or, indeed, you, for that matter? Obviously that’s my husband’s newest bit of skirt—what was it she’d found? His morals in a bin bag?”
“Actually, it was his wedding ring.”
