by West, Sam
A small whimper escaped her lips as horrendous thought after horrendous thought slammed into her mind. He put his arm around her in a parody of a lover’s embrace, pulling her along with him down the road.
To her dismay, the street was deserted – not even a car passed them.
Run, screamed the voice of reason in her mind. Yet she didn’t. Passively, she allowed herself to be bodily escorted down the street. They had only walked a few metres down the deserted pavement when they came to a halt by a parked car. That too, was familiar and her eyes widened with a sudden stab of recognition.
The man nodded, and smiled. Before she could react, searing pain exploded in the side of her head where he had struck her, and everything went black.
CHAPTER SIX
Two days after the disastrous night out, Freya was back at work. Usually, on a Monday, she worked with Lucy and Betty, but Lucy hadn’t turned up for work today. And now, standing with Jean on the shop-floor, she was getting it all, full chapter and verse.
“I got a phone call from Esther an hour ago, asking if I could come in today. It’s terribly short notice, but I couldn’t really say no. Are you all right, dear, you’ve gone a bit pale,” Jean said to her as they stood together by the entrance to the shop.
Freya regarded her work colleague, a bad feeling churning her guts.
Oh God, the letter, I didn’t do the task and something’s happened to Lucy…
“I’m fine,” she said, even managing a small smile for the old lady’s benefit.
“Are you sure? You look a bit peaky.”
At the time, Freya had been furious at Lucy, but now, she admitted to herself that maybe she had overreacted. They had both been drunk, it had probably meant nothing.
There was no denying that the sting of betrayal was still strong, but she was no longer so furious – so adamant that her trust had been broken, that everyone on the planet was out to fuck with her, in every single possible sense.
“I’m fine, really. Well, best get on with putting the new stock out, I suppose.”
“Yes, Esther has got me upstairs again, today. I suppose she only puts the pretty young things on display on the shop floor.”
“Oh, thank you, I can’t remember the last time anyone called me a pretty young thing,” Betty laughed from a few feet away.
Betty Green was the other older woman that worked here on a part-time basis, the final member of staff. She was busy up the top end of the shop, pricing up the last of the sale stock.
Jean laughed. “I wasn’t really talking about you, Betty dear.”
The other woman cackled, and came down the stairs to join them, quickly casting around to make sure that Esther was out of sight. Freya smile weakly and discreetly backed away from the two older women, who had now moved onto the subject of gardening.
They didn’t pay much attention to her slinking away, and she got back to what she was doing, which was pricing up the new stock of winter skirts at the front of the shop.
Freya was busy pricing up and hanging out the new stock when Jim’s van pulled up outside the shop. Her face flushed hot and her heart immediately started to hammer, partly because she had left his place in a such a ridiculous, vaguely humiliating drama, and partly because she just flat-out liked him.
With great difficulty, she attempted to ignore him as she priced up the new stock, the price-gun visibly trembling in her hand. The driver’s door of the van slammed shut and she kept her head down, pretending not to hear.
“Hello,” he said, coming straight up to her, not even bothering to empty the back of the van of any boxes. “I wanted to call but I didn’t have your number, but I figured I’d just see you here and talk to you then. I’m so sorry about the other night, I can’t believe Lucy pulled a stunt like that. I wanted to go after you, but there was no stopping Lucy.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” she mumbled.
“Did Lucy catch up with you?”
“No,” she said, remembering how she had pretty much jogged the three mile walk home in tears.
“Have you guys spoken since? Because Gary can’t get hold of her. Her mobile’s switched off, and when he spoke to one of her flatmates, she said that she got an email from her saying that she was going back up north for a few days to see her parents for a week. You know, get her head together and stuff.”
Freya frowned at this titbit of information, that all-too-familiar bad feeling clenching in her stomach.
Christ, will you get a grip already? That has to be true – she must’ve been too embarrassed to face me or Gary. She told herself this, but somehow, that bad feeling wouldn’t shift.
“When did her flatmate get this email, then?”
“The next day. Gary thought she might’ve caught up with you and stayed the night at your place. But as neither me nor Gary know where you live, or even have your number, we just didn’t know. I mean, I tried to find you on facebook, but I couldn’t…”
His voice trailed off as he stared at her, a slight frown creasing his brow.
“Yeah, I don’t have a facebook,” she said.
From the way he continued to stare at her, she decided that she must look deadly serious, so she made a conscious effort to soften her expression.
Because if she was honest with herself, she was also scared. What happened to you, Lucy? Where did you go?
To her parents, that’s all. Will you stop stressing?
“Freya? Will let me take you out tonight? Would you please give me your mobile number?”
She regarded him with some surprise. Was he actually blushing? This fact was deeply endearing, and before she realised what she was doing, she found herself nodding.
Jim’s face broke out into a broad grin. “That’s great,” he said, producing his mobile from his jeans’ pocket. “Hit me.”
It was almost in a trance-like state that she rattled off her mobile number.
I can’t believe I just did that, she thought in awe. In fact, she could feel her barriers dropping by the second. It was an alien sensation, one that caught her off-guard and left her disorientated and confused.
Jim opened his mouth as if about to say something, his expression sheepish, but Esther took that moment to burst through the doors that led to the upstairs stock-room.
“Best get on with it. I’ll text you about tonight,” he said, dropping her a wink and completely blanking Esther as she strode over to them.
By the time the older woman had reached them, Jim was already unloading the back of the van, and her boss’s face was like thunder.
“You’re not getting paid to stand around gossiping,” she snapped. “There’s a woman in the changing room that requires assistance. Go now.”
“Sure,” Freya said with the fakest of smiles.
Jim’s old enough to be her son, for God’s sake, she thought with a certain amount of amusement.
A few minutes later, as she searched the shop for a red tweed skirt in a size sixteen, Jim approached her on his way back from the stockroom. He handed her a white envelope with her first name scrawled across the front of it and her heart plummeted to her sensible work-shoes.
“Someone shoved this under my windscreen wiper,” he said.
But she barely heard him for the blood whooshing in her ears. She stared down at the offending letter in horror, her vision swimming and her heart hammering.
Oh God, not again.
Ignoring Jim, she rushed to the front of the shop and stood outside on the pavement. The shop was on a street just off the main, pedestrianised shopping-centre, and this stretch of road was always busy with cars. Frantically, she scanned the surrounding area for any possible suspects.
Everyone that walked past her just looked so ordinary. The nearest people to her – an elderly couple on her left and two pretty girls in their twenties on her right – seemed oblivious to her distress. A young man dressed in a suit hurried past her, his mobile phone pressed to his ear. She regarded him with suspicion but he blanked her, intent as he
was on the phone-call.
Her mind reeled and for a horrible second, the pavement lurched beneath her feet as blind panic assaulted her. Dimly, she became aware of Jim right behind her, talking to her:
“Hey, are you okay? What’s going on?”
She flinched when he reached out and rested a gentle hand on her shoulder.
“Sorry,” he muttered, dropping his hand immediately. “Freya? What is it? Is it the letter I just gave you?”
The letter I just gave you…
She spun round to face him, her heart in her mouth. Oh God, what if it’s Jim sending those letters?
The poor lad looked as startled as she felt, and she instantly dismissed the idea.
Mostly.
“Did you see who put the letter under your wiper?” she asked.
“No. Freya, what is this? Are you getting poison pen letters, or something?” His expression fell. Either he was a top-class actor or he was genuinely concerned. “My God, you are, aren’t you?”
She could only stare at him, feeling very much like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights.
“I have to get back to work,” she said, turning away from him.
“Freya. Please.”
Just the tone of his voice made her stop in her tracks. Don’t get emotionally involved, a little voice warned in her mind. Yet somehow, she knew it was too late for that. She knew what he was going to ask even before he asked it, and more importantly, she knew what she was going to say in reply.
“Are we still on for tonight?”
“Yes,” she said, without turning round.
She was painfully aware of his gaze boring a hole into her back as she resumed the task at hand of pricing up the new stock. Studiously, she ignored him as he made trip after trip through the shop to dump the stock in the downstairs stockroom. He didn’t try to speak to her again, but every time he passed her, he flashed her a grin, and every time he did so, her heart would leap like a lovesick teenager’s.
Esther had also appeared on the shop-floor, and Freya was aware of her watching her every move, even as she dealt with customers. By the time Jim was nearing the end of his delivery, Esther beckoned her over to her till between a lull in customers.
“You can take your break, now.”
Freya regarded her steadily. “I haven’t even been here an hour, yet.”
“So? This is a convenient time for you to take your break. So go, please.”
It was painfully obvious what the silly old cow was doing – she didn’t want her around Jim – and Freya stared at her in disbelief.
He’s young enough to be your grandson, she thought, but didn’t say.
Instead, she smirked. “Sure. I’ll take my break now.” But you can’t stop me from going out with him tonight, she thought with a stab of satisfaction.
When she passed Jim on the way to the stairs, he smiled at her one last time. A secret smile, full of promise.
Freya smiled back.
Up in the small staffroom next to the large stockroom, she pulled out the letter from the waistband of her skirt. Absently, she filled the kettle with water as she stared at it.
Just chuck it in the bin. What you don’t see can’t hurt you. Then she thought of Lucy. Something’s happened to her, and it’s all my fault. Despite repeatedly telling herself otherwise, it was a conviction that she couldn’t shake.
Fuck it, was her last thought as she ripped open the letter and nervously peered inside. This letter was thicker than the first one, and looked like it was comprised of at least three, A4 sheets of paper folded three times into a neat wad. With trembling hands, she unfolded the paper. There were a total of four sheets which she flattened out and flicked through.
At first, what she was seeing made no sense to her. Perhaps, on some level, she did understand what she was looking at, but her brain balked in protest at the visual battering.
On three of those four sheets of paper were printed dark, grainy photographs which filled the entire page. Slowly, the images started to make horrible sense.
Dear God, no, this can’t be happening.
She eased herself into one of the three wooden chairs round the rickety wooden table, laying the images out flat on the table top.
For what felt like an eternity, she just sat there, staring at them. She was unable to move, unable to think, oblivious to her surroundings and the kettle boiling to a crescendo.
The three photos were of her. And they were so dark and grainy because they were taken of her at night. Three photos, from three different night-time excursions. Photo number one was the most recent, taken three nights ago when she had followed those two rapists and that hapless tart into the park. It showed her kneeling by the rapist who lay on his front with his trousers tugged down over his bare rump which glowed as white as the moon in the dark photo. His face, contorted into a mask of pain was twisted towards the camera, the handle of her knife sticking out of his rectum.
The second photo showed a night from around two weeks ago, when she had allowed a pervert to take her into an alleyway… where she had cut off his penis. The photo – which was the darkest of the three and almost impossible to see – showed the man on his knees, clutching his crotch. Freya stood over him, the same extended switchblade from the previous photo in hand.
The third picture had been taken a comparatively long time ago – so long in fact, that it took her a moment to recall the event. Then the memory exploded in her mind.
Four months ago, at the old, abandoned plastic’s factory on the industrial estate.
She didn’t often venture that far out of town, not least because it could be dangerous, even by her standards. The type of night-crawler that lurked in places like that were a little different from regular folk. As much as she whole-heartedly believed that they deserved everything she willingly dished out, she could barely even bring herself to think of them as human. Sometimes, in her blacker moments, she was convinced that this other type of night-vermin had crawled up from the very depths of hell itself. They were just different from the regular tramps that slept in shop doorways and under railway bridges, begging for change. Those guys were fucking aliens from another planet.
Of course, she knew this was fanciful thinking, but even so. And as she stared at the third photo, her stomach squirmed in fear. She hadn’t been back to that closed-down factory since that night – that awful, terrifying night when she had been outnumbered by them. By the freaks.
And now, here she was, with the photographic evidence of that night right in front of her. In the picture, she was being held down on the concrete floor in a downstairs hallway of the factory by the four of the freaks. The photo must have been taken before she had broken free and kicked their arse, but for a few minutes there, it had been touch and go.
But the thing that disturbed her the most, was that she had no idea that someone had been following her. Freya fancied herself as a creature of the night. She was the stealthy one, the one who watched from the shadows. The very idea that someone else was watching her disturbed her deeply.
But more than anything, as scared as she was, it made her feel like a fool.
Not wanting to look at the damning evidence for a second longer, she carefully folded the letters back up and placed them inside the envelope.
With her heart hammering against her ribcage and her hands shaking, she began to read the typed letter on the remaining, A4 piece of paper:
Well, Freya, it would appear that you have a flagrant disregard for rules, an as a result, Lucy will pay for your casual negligence. But, being the generous man that I am, I shall put your inattention down to forgetfulness, just this one time. I am sure you meant to follow my instructions, but forgot.
So just in case you accidently threw my letter in the bin of your flat, and then the task I set you simply slipped from your mind, please allow me to remind you…
The first task I ask of you is that you confront your biggest fear: SEX. Yes, I can imagine that the word alone makes you
feel ill, am I right? Tonight, on one of your ‘night walks’, I want you to go to City Park. As I am sure you are aware, just up from where you were last night is a clearing surrounded by trees that is renowned for its night-time, dogging activity. Have you ever been dogging, Freya? Have you ever watched strangers have sex at night and masturbated? Have you ever been that person, seeking the touch of a stranger under the blanket of the night sky?
No, I don’t suppose that you have. But fear not, for tonight, Freya, all your wishes will come true, because tonight, you are going dogging. At midnight tonight, you are to go to go down to that clearing, wearing nothing but your DM boots and your long leather coat. You will lie down on the grass, spread your coat wide and open your legs, and wait for whatever may happen. Because what happens next is up to you, all I ask is that you lie there for half an hour.
Know that I am watching you. Even when you think you are alone, I am watching you. I wish you nothing but luck.
Does this task sound familiar to you, Freya? I should imagine that it does. This time, if you should fail to complete it, I quite promise you that Lucy will die. As it is, she is still alive, but should you fail to complete this simple instruction, she won’t survive.
And your new friend Jim will be next.
Know that I am watching you…
For a long time, Freya sat there unmoving, staring at the offending letter. Eventually, she folded it into three, and tucked it into the envelope with the photographs. She glanced at the wall-clock. It was just after eleven, which meant she had the rest of the day to decide what to do.
She was still sitting there, staring at the envelope in front of her on the table when the sound of footsteps approaching the staffroom door spurred her into action. Hastily, she snatched the envelope and shoved it into the waistband of her skirt, just managing to tug her cardigan down over it in time before Jean entered the staffroom.
“You’re fifteen minutes is up, dear. Esther sent me up on my break and said to send you back down.”
