Souls At Zero (A Dark Psychological Thriller)

by Neal Martin

  "Okay, that's all I need," Harry said. "Now I want you to go and find somewhere to hide, Kaitlin, just until I get there."

  "For how long?" She hated the thought of having to wait on him coming. She desperately wished he was there already.

  "Not long. I promise. You just can't be around when he gets back. You have to hide from him until I get there."

  She looked at the old house, which seemed even more foreboding from the outside. "I don't want to go back in that house, Harry. It scares me."

  "What about the barn?" he suggested. "Is there anywhere in there you can hide? Just for a little while, that's all."

  "I'll look," she said, beginning to limp over towards the old barn. Just as she did, she looked to the right, over the huge field, and saw a car driving along the road about a mile away. "I see a car. Is it you?" She couldn't help feeling hopeful.

  "No. That's the man who took you, Kaitlin. Get to the barn. Now!"

  The car turned onto the road that led up to the farm. Kaitlin noticed it was orange before she began to move as quickly as she could towards the barn. "The car is orange," she told Harry, struggling to keep her breath in the cold.

  "Good girl. Keep going. Hurry now."

  "My leg is hurt. I can't run."

  "That's okay. Just move as fast as you can."

  She made it into the barn finally and hoped she did so before the man in the orange car saw her. The barn smelt of rotting wood, motor oil and a lingering stench of manure or old hay. To her left was a rusted old car with blocks under the tireless wheels. Towards the back of the barn was what seemed like a large pile of rubbish that included old tires, buckets, barrels and some other stuff that she barely took in. She stood for a moment, wondering where to go.

  "Can you see anywhere to hide?" Harry asked her, his voice calm, but still full of urgency.

  "I…maybe." She thought about climbing into the back of the old car, but decided she didn't want to be trapped in there if the kidnapper came looking. Instead, she moved to the back of the barn, just as she heard the sound of the kidnapper's car pull into the front yard. She limped as fast as she could toward the piles of rubbish, and hid behind a stack of steel oil drums that were partly covered by a dirty green tarpaulin. Her sprained ankle twisted slightly as she sat herself down on the dirty concrete, and she gritted her teeth to muffle the scream of pain that wanted to come out.

  "Kaitlin? Are you okay?"

  "Yes. Please hurry, Harry. He's back." Her voice had dropped to a frightened whisper now as she heard the kidnapper slam the door of his car.

  "Okay, I need you to be very brave now, Kaitlin. I have to put you on hold while I try to find out where exactly you are."

  "Don't go, please," she said, stricken by panic.

  "I have to, love," Harry said. "Just stay put until I get there. I'm not far away. But I need to narrow down your location first. Okay?"

  She sniffed back tears. "Okay," she whispered.

  "Alright. I'm putting you on hold now. I'll check back in a minute."

  Kaitlin continued to hold the phone to her ear as Harry's voice disappeared.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  It nearly killed Edger to put his daughter on hold. Kaitlin sounded hurt and terrified, and every minute of her still being at that house twisted at his gut. But he had to talk to Donna. "Donna?" he said, as he switched calls on the phone.

  "Harry? Where'd you go?"

  "I just spoke to Kaitlin."

  "What? How?"

  In the background, Edger could hear Gemma as she spoke over Donna. "Harry? Where's Kaitlin?" Her voice was full of distress, but he could hear the hope in it.

  "She's still where Declan has her," he told her. "She must have gotten free somehow. She's hiding out until I get there."

  "Oh God…"

  "Gemma, I need to speak to Donna."

  "I'm here, Harry."

  "Donna, how many deserted farms are in the area? Can you tell from those maps?"

  "Hold on." Donna was silent for a moment, then she said, "I count three within the radius."

  "Shit. Kaitlin is at one of them. I don't know which one though."

  "Okay," Donna said. "Two of the farms are right on the edge of the radius you're in. The third is about three miles from your current location."

  "God damn it. Declan is already there, Kaitlin said."

  "Wait, he's there already? If that's the case then there's no way he made it so quick to any of the two locations furthest away. He must be at the nearest one."

  Edger started the car. "Directions," he said.

  Blutwolf saw the front door of the farmhouse lying open as he drove up the dirt road. He distinctly remembered closing it before he left, and there was no way the wind had blown it open as the door was too swollen and stiff to move so easily.

  Someone had opened it. But who?

  He stopped the orange Vauxhall in front of the house, got out and stood looking around. There were no other vehicles and he doubted Harry had made it here before him. Harry didn't even know about the place. How could he? Which meant the girl had escaped somehow, something he thought would have been impossible, given that the attic trap door was padlocked shut. There was no way she had the strength to pull it open, especially with a missing finger.

  Reaching inside his jacket, Blutwolf took out the Beretta, and then walked into the house, first checking the living room where all his stuff was. Nothing seemed to be disturbed until he looked at the canvas bag on the floor. It wasn't how he left it. He went over, knelt down beside the bag and began to look through it. Everything appeared to still be there until he remembered he had a spur burner phone that didn't seem to be around anymore. He checked the room again, but there was no sign of it.

  "Little bitch," he said with a half smile on his face. If the girl had managed to escape from the attic room somehow, she was more resourceful than he gave her credit for.

  Blutwolf left the living room and moved quickly up the stairs to the top landing. He looked up the ladder to the trap door leading into the attic. It was still padlocked. He frowned. Maybe he was wrong. Maybe she was still in there.

  Then he happened to look down the landing and saw that the door to the master bedroom was open. "Kaitlin?" he called out, not really expecting an answer.

  He held the Beretta out in front of him, moved past the ladder and down the landing to the master bedroom. Looking through the door, he saw the pile of broken wood and plaster on the floor, then he looked up and saw the hole in the ceiling. He smiled and shook his head. Did she make that hole on purpose, or had she fallen through somehow? It didn't matter. All that mattered was that she was free, and that she had a phone on her. She was probably hiding out somewhere, on the phone to her father. If that was the case, Edger would have asked his daughter to pinpoint her location, which she would have to be outside in order to do.

  The barn. She's in the barn. That's why the front door was open.

  Blutwolf ran back down the stairs and headed outside.

  Edger was speeding along a narrow, straight road in his ex-wife's Ford Fiesta, nothing on either side of him but greenish brown fields and clumps of rock here and there, a massive expanse of grey sky overlooking it all.

  Donna was still on the phone. "Another mile, Harry and you should see the farm to your right."

  "Okay. I'm going to check on Kaitlin now. I'll call you when I find something."

  "Harry?" It was Gemma.

  "I'm here, Gemma."

  "Get her back, Harry. Get Kaitlin back. Please."

  "I will." He switched the line back to Kaitlin. "Kaitlin? You there?"

  "Harry?" Her voice was a whisper. He could hear the obvious pain in it and it tore at him like he was feeling the pain himself.

  "I'm almost there, Kaitlin. Just hold on. Can you do that?"

  There was a long silence, then Kaitlin whispered, "He's here."

  Edger's heart skipped a beat. "Where is he, Kaitlin?"

  "The barn." She was speaking so low
he could hardly hear her voice.

  In the distance, about a quarter of a mile to his right, Edger saw the farmhouse with the barn beside it. "I can see the farm, Kaitlin. I'm nearly there. Kaitlin?"

  The next voice he heard wasn't Kaitlin's. It was his brother's voice, calling Kaitlin's name in the background, getting louder each time as he drew near her. Edger heard his daughter's breathing speed up and then stop as she held her breath. Then he heard her scream and the phone went dead a second later.

  "Kaitlin?" Edger shouted. "Fuck!"

  He stepped hard on the accelerator and sped towards the farm.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Edger drove the small Fiesta at 100mph for over a mile along the narrow road, until he finally came to the deserted farm where he hoped Kaitlin was hiding out. The farmhouse was a quarter mile to his right, across a large field, and from what he could see, the place was as Kaitlin had described, with the telegraph pole and the large boulder in the centre of the field in front of the dirty white farmhouse and red barn. He was in such a hurry that he overshot the turn off, and he had to brake hard, the tires on the Fiesta screeching on the asphalt of the road. He reversed the car back and turned onto the narrow dirt road that would lead him to the farm. The car bumped and rocked from side to side as he drove as fast as he could along the uneven surface of the road, fighting with the steering to keep from veering into the hedgerows that lined the road at either side. As he got nearer the farmhouse, the sky above seemed to get darker as vast rain clouds began to gather and before he knew it, it seemed like late evening outside instead of early afternoon. When he saw the orange Vauxhall parked in front of the house, he didn't know whether to feel relieved that he come to the right location, or anxious that his older brother was there, probably having found Kaitlin in her hiding spot by now.

  Driving off the dirt road to the concrete yard at the front of the house, Edger brought the Fiesta to a stop not far from the Vauxhall already parked there. He looked through the window across the yard to the large, dilapidated barn, but saw no sign of either Kaitlin or his brother. The front door to the farmhouse was also open, so there was a chance they were inside the house, perhaps waiting on him. But he didn't think so. From what he heard over the phone five minutes before, Declan had found Kaitlin in the barn. Edger's instincts told him they were both there now.

  Before he got out of the car, he took out the Glock 17 from inside his jacket, the one he had snatched from the cop back at McGinty's house. Quickly, he slid the magazine out, checked that it was full, and slid it back in again, before pulling back the slide and chambering one of the 9mm rounds. Then he was out of the car and moving across the yard, the Glock held in both hands out in front of him as he moved towards the barn, specks of rain beginning to fall from the sky and land on the barrel of the gun.

  There were no doors on the front of the barn, just a large opening. When he got close to it, he stopped for a second, breathed deeply and then moved through the opening, the gun pointed out, his finger on the trigger guard.

  He didn't stop moving forward even when he saw his brother standing in the centre of the barn, one arm around Kaitlin's neck, his other hand holding the gun that was pointing at her head.

  "Harry!" Kaitlin screamed.

  Edger stopped some ten feet away and drew a bead on his brother's head with the Glock. "Let her go, Declan," he said, keeping his voice as calm as possible, which was difficult, considering the brother he thought was dead was standing across from him holding a gun to his daughter's head.

  "That's far enough, Harry," Declan said. "Don't think I won't shoot her. I will."

  Edger looked at Kaitlin and saw the fear in her eyes as his brother pressed the point of the gun into her temple.

  "Alright." Edger held both hands up in the air. He slowly lowered his weapon to the floor, placed it there, and then raised his hands in the air again. "You've got me. You don't need her anymore. Let her go."

  His brother shook his head. "No, Harry. She stays. She needs to hear the truth about her daddy."

  "What truth?" Edger asked.

  His brother's eyes seemed to darken and his lips curled into a sneer. "That you are responsible for sending me to hell. That truth."

  Edger shook his head. The man before him was Declan. Older obviously, but his face was still the same face Edger remembered from all those years ago, apart from the deep scar down one side. But that wasn't the only difference. The man before him was clearly psychotic. Deeply traumatised. Edger had come across enough soldiers over the years who had seen and done things—terrible things mostly—that their minds just couldn't handle. They became hollowed out, their personalities transposed by the darkness inside them.

  When Edger looked into his brothers grey eyes—eyes that once held nothing but light—all he could see was darkness.

  "What happened to you, Declan?"

  Declan tightened his grip on Kaitlin so hard he almost lifted her off the ground. His teeth were gritted. "What happened? What happened is you fucking left me that night! That's what fucking happened!"

  "No…"

  "Don't, Harry." He pressed the gun into Kaitlin's temple, and she screamed in fear again. "Don't you fucking lie to me. Not now. Tell the truth!"

  Edger did his best to contain the maelstrom of emotion that was threatening to overwhelm him, emotions that he had suppressed and kept buried deep within himself for years. He looked into Kaitlin's frightened eyes, and it seemed like even she was willing him to spill his guts, to finally empty himself of the guilt and shame he had been carrying around for so long now. "It was three grown men who took you, Declan. There was nothing I could have done for you. I—"

  "Stop! One of them went to grab you and I put him down. You remember that? I punched that fucker in the face and he went down. Then what happened, Harry?"

  Edger couldn't bring himself to speak as memories of that night came flooding back, images that normally only came to him in nightmares. The fear of that night was in his every pore now.

  "Tell me what happened, Harry!" his brother screamed. "Or so help me, I'll put a bullet in her brain!" He roughly tightened his grip on Kaitlin's neck and pressed the barrel of the gun into the side of her head.

  Whatever colour was left in Kaitlin's face drained from her as she cried, "Daddy, please!"

  It was the first time she had ever called him that. Tears sprang to his eyes as he thought he was going to lose her. "Okay," he croaked. He tore his gaze from his daughter's distraught face and looked at his brother, whose own face was full of rage. "I ran."

  "What? I didn't hear you, Harry. Say it again."

  "I ran!" Edger shouted, overcome by years of guilt and shame. "I ran away and left you there!" He felt as hollowed out as his brother obviously was, as he stood with tears running down his cheeks.

  Declan stared at him for a long time, like Edger's admission had been a moment he had been waiting for since that night. "I never understood, Harry," he said finally, his voice dead again, his rage boiled away. "I taught you to fight, to stand your ground. Between the two of us, we could have fought those three men off. But instead, you ran. You left me, Harry."

  "I was fifteen, Declan," Edger said, unable to keep the anger from his voice. "I was scared for fucks sake."

  "So was I!"

  Edger shook his head. "I'm sorry, Declan. There hasn't been a day since that I haven't thought about that night, that I haven't regretted it."

  His brother held onto Kaitlin, waving the gun about as he spoke. "And what about after? Did you even try to find me?"

  "Of course I did. Everyone thought the paramilitaries had taken you. The cops said there wasn't anything they could do." Edger shook his head. "I was just a kid, Declan, same as you. What was I supposed to do?"

  Edger's older brother glared at him a moment then shook his head. "So you went and joined the fucking army. The Foreign Legion, no less. Was that you trying to make up for running away and leaving me?"

  Edger said nothing. Just looked
at his daughter, hoping she didn't see the shame in his eyes.

  "You spent your life in conflicts. Putting yourself in danger to protect other people. Driven by your own guilt, no doubt."

  "I loved you, Declan. I still do. I'm sorry for what happened. If I could go back…"

  "Stop it, Harry. That doesn't mean much to me now. Not after everything that happened since." He shook his head. "If you only knew what was done to me. What they made me into."

  "Why don't you let Kaitlin go and then we can talk. She's innocent in all this. She's your niece, Declan."

  His brother gave a cynical laugh. "If I were still a human being, that might mean something to me. But I'm not. I'm a monster now. Can't you see that?"

  "You're still my brother. You've no idea how much I've missed you."

  A flicker of emotion came into his brother's eyes, but it was no sooner there than it was gone. "I'm sure you did, Harry. I may even have missed you for a while. But it's too late for family reunions. The brother you knew is dead now. There is only Blutwolf. That's what the Angel Of Death turned me into. The Blood Wolf."

  Edger didn't know what to say to that. His brother was obviously crazy from whatever happened to him since they last met. But that didn't mean Edger was going to abandon him again. He would get his brother help. Try to make him well again. "Let Kaitlin go, Declan," Edger said, walking slowly forward. "She's just a little girl, and she's scared. She's been through enough."

  His brother stared back at him a moment, then he took the gun away from Kaitlin's head and released her from his grip. Kaitlin immediately bolted towards Edger, who picked her up and held her in his arms while she clung to him, sobbing into his neck.

  "You have to help me, Harry," Edger's older brother said. "The ones who took me, they subjected me to the most horrific torture imaginable. For years. They stole my mind." He pointed the gun at his own head. "My fucking mind, Harry. They took who I was and destroyed it. Made me into someone else. A killer. Someone who would kill on command. The things I've done, Harry…" He shook his head. "Terrible things. And the worst part is, I didn't have a choice. I had to do what I was told, do what the Angel Of Death commanded me to do."