The image flickered and Hayley hoped it would end, but the visuals regained clarity, detailing the cat in monochrome night vision as it hung on the fence, crucified by its abhorrent tormentors.
The girl prised a nail from her brother’s fist and pushed it into the animal’s stomach. Drawing it up toward the cat’s throat, she slowly forced the skin apart; digging her fingers in once she had worked a large enough wound, and tearing at the animal’s fur.
Greedily, her brother barged her to one side and forced his hands into the widening hole, sliding his fingers through the gore-drenched gash and pulling at the feline’s flesh. The cat’s strength began to weaken as its attempts to fight against its torturous restraints become too painful to bear, but still it continued to hiss and wail, screeching as it flashed its fangs at its juvenile attackers.
Hayley felt her stomach flip as she watched the children force handfuls of fur-lined meat into their mouths, chewing on the chunks they’d torn from the helpless pet. They fought like feeding sharks as they jostled for position in front of their feast, wildly grabbing at the hanging flesh and pulling its insides out.
The slopping sound was only in her mind, but she heard it clear enough when the animal’s entrails began slipping from the growing wound; dangling like flesh-filled streamers from the panicked staccato of its beating chest.
Her palms were moist, her head spun with the revulsion that gripped her tightening stomach; she could feel the trembling in her hands. How much more of this could she take?
At last the children turned to the camera, their mouths full, blood dripping down their long, pointed chins as they heartily chewed on the screaming animal’s meat. Even with the low resolution of the CCTV recording, Hayley could make out their strange features: those long, slender noses, large ears and high rounded cheeks, making them look like caricatures found on Toby Jugs or adorning the cover of MAD magazine.
‘Enough,’ she said, causing her boss to pause the recording. ‘It’s definitely those two alright. That’s Ebon and Lenka.’
She stared at the screen, the two impish faces smiling with devilish delight as they stared back at her on the flickering monitor, their eyes full of evil.
Hayley took a sip of coffee and composed herself. The haunting images of the video ran through her mind. It had been three days since the police had brought the CCTV recording to the office, and two days since her boss had shown her the shocking footage. Getting the appointment arranged had been a tennis match of text messages with the foster parents, but the children were waiting outside patiently and promptly this morning when Hayley drove by to pick them up.
For some reason she had known it would be Lenka and Ebon, even before she sat down to watch the tape. She’d taken pity on them when they’d first been sent to her, as she did to all kids in need; it’s why she took the job as a social worker. But despite this sympathy, despite her engrained desire to help, from the first moment she met them, she couldn’t shake the feeling there was something wrong with them. Something that sent a chill through her body and set her nerves on edge whenever she was in their company.
It wasn’t a good notion for a social worker to entertain, but she couldn’t change the way she felt. Hayley tried to override this feeling of unease with her usual compassion, but her gut instincts proved wilfully stronger and resisted any fight with reason. Relief was more welcome than usual when the pair quickly found a place in foster care. Dawn and Lee Hayes were a good, wholesome couple that didn’t seem to feel the same cloying dread as Hayley had whilst alone in the pair’s presence.
But with the video footage, captured from the city’s CCTV, her hunch had been proved right.
It was with dismay but urgency that the children were called in for an interview and psychiatric assessment, and as Hayley took another sip from her coffee, hoping its usual satisfaction would grant a little respite, she could still feel the beady, unblinking eyes of Lenka and Ebon, watching her with a fixed gaze across the desk.
The gloom of an overcast day had penetrated the building, seeping through the windows, and no amount of playing with the light controls seemed to shift the shadows that settled in the room.
With flashes from the video replaying in her thoughts, of teeth gnawing on feline flesh, the social worker gulped back the lukewarm, brown liquid and quietly longed for the calming drag of a cigarette.
‘Did you know you were hurting the cat?’ Hayley asked, trying hard to keep her voice from quivering with disgust.
Disgust and fear.
‘Yes,’ Ebon answered matter-of-factly without a trace of remorse.
‘The most possible hurt we could,’ Lenka followed up, her expression unchanging, and her focus fixed on the woman questioning them.
Hayley felt the rising pimples of gooseflesh spread across her arm. She thought back to the blood-splattered smiles she’d watched on the CCTV; their stares managing to pierce her soul, even through the barrier of a television screen.
Today was no different.
Only even more disturbing in the flesh.
They were a strange case, taken off the streets three weeks ago by the police and handed to social services. No one knew about the CCTV at the time. That took a while to surface and do the rounds: from head teachers to parent groups and finally to Hayley’s place of work.
They had nothing on file for the two children, no birth certificates, no immigration papers or asylum documentation. It was possible they could have sneaked into the country, stowed away in a lorry to get through border control, but with who? And from where?
‘Did you mean to kill the cat?’ she asked, unnerved by their calmness.
‘Eventually,’ Lenka replied; her single-word answer left to hang in the proceeding silence.
Both Lenka and Ebon had a clipped accent, but not one that helped pinpoint their country of origin. The children knew very little about their own history. At least very little they were willing to impart. The pair were a mystery.
Picking up a crayon and running it along one of the blank pieces of paper that had been left out for them, Lenka filled in the lingering silence. ‘We didn’t want it to die straight away. Not until we got to feed.’ Ebon gave her a glancing look, but his sister continued. ‘It needed to be alive whilst we ate its meat. It needed to scream.’
Hayley swallowed back the saliva in her throat, hoping to dampen the nausea that swirled within her.
‘I like to chew on the eyes,’ Lenka’s grin grew wider as she put the crayon down and stared at the social worker. Her white teeth glowed in the gloom as delight spread across her face like a cold, calculated threat. ‘They taste like sugar knobs.’
‘Slides down your throat with a wondrous taste,’ Ebon added.
Hayley felt herself shrink into the chair; the grotesque confessions of these children and their startling detachment was overwhelming; sending the woman’s head into a spin. Her heart thumped against her ribs and her palms grew uncomfortably moist.
‘Why did you do it?’
‘Mampy,’ Lenka said off-handedly as her attention returned back to the crayon and her own scribblings. ‘He-’
‘Lenka!’ Ebon called her name through gritted teeth, closing her down before she could say anymore.
‘It’s okay, Ebon,’ Hayley reassured him. ‘You’re safe here.’ She was in over her head, but she fought her disgust and continued with the questioning, determined to find out more. ‘Pussy cats don’t deserve to be treated that way. I just want to know why you did it. Who’s Mampy? It’ll be okay.’ She paused for a moment. ‘I promise.’
‘Mampy helped us,’ Ebon acquiesced, his eyes boring deep into hers. ‘He taught us how to survive.’
‘Did he tell you to eat the cat? For food?’
‘For protection,’ came Ebon’s response; his ski-jump nose wrinkled and his brow furrowed. His grin, fixed and devoid of any joy, curled at the edges betraying an emotional response, but one Hayley failed to decipher.
‘Protection?’ she asked. ‘Again
st what?’
‘You said we’re safe here?’ Uncertainty turned Ebon’s statement into a question.
Lenka stopped colouring and looked up, expectantly, at the social worker, quietly humming an annoyingly catchy tune. Hayley wasn’t sure what it was, but the two had been whistling the same melody on and off since she’d picked them up. The off-key rendition grated at the social worker’s ears. The wavering notes felt like fingernails through her brain.
‘Of course you’re safe. No one is going to hurt you,’ Hayley reassured him, commanding a compassionate smile from her lips. ‘Whatever happened in your past is long gone. You’re with us now. We’re here to protect you.’
‘We shouldn’t talk about it,’ Ebon’s voice lowered to barely a whisper. ‘We don’t mention his name.’
‘Who?’ came the adult’s measured response. ‘You can tell me.’
Lenka stopped humming and stared at her brother. The pair didn’t utter a word, but a look of agreement fell upon their faces as they concluded their unspoken communication.
‘It haunts us. Hunts us,’ Ebon confessed.
‘Winter’s coming. It’s why we’re here,’ Lenka’s hushed voice was barely audible. ‘We’re running out of places to hide.’
Hayley leaned forward and attempted to reach out, to hold their hands in a sign of solidarity, but something made her stop; her subconscious screaming inside, reacting to the clawing dread that lurked in the back of her mind.
‘Who is after you?’ she asked, softly.
Ebon leant in closer; his head almost touching hers.
His voice shook as it cracked with fear, forcing the words from his mouth like a globule of phlegm he was too disgusted to let slide past his tongue.
When he finally found the courage he uttered two words: ‘The Ugly.’
Inhaling deeply on a cigarette, Hayley tried to steady her shaking hand. The wind was refreshing as it blew against her, howling through the alleyway beside her place of work.
The day had started off badly. Confronting her son over accusations of bullying from his school had led to a stand-up row, one that resulted in Billy calling her a fucking bitch. Enraged by this outburst she struck him across the face. An open-palmed slap that was designed to shock more than hurt.
It shocked them both.
The strike had been so instinctive, so reactionary that the first thing she knew about it was the tingling in her hand and the red mark across his cheek.
Hayley had spent all day berating herself. She’d never hurt her child, but the anger of hearing her polite, young son, talk like an eight-year-old thug was too much to bear!
It wasn’t really Billy’s fault. He was impressionable. Easily led. He’d fallen in with the wrong crowd. His older cousins would steer him right, she had no doubt.
And that language! Where did he learn to swear like that? The answer was obvious. Ken, her husband, allowed Billy to stay up late when they were home alone, and together they watched action movies.
That was going to stop. A young mind was a sponge, easily swayed by attitudes and actions in films and television; easily polluted by what passed as adult entertainment.
The kid’s stuff was bad enough. Everything was so dramatic, upfront and violent. Had her actions, her lashing out on her son, been driven by the saturation of the modern culture? Had she been influenced by the aggression that was present even in things as innocuous as soap operas and television commercials?
Advertising creatives had become finely attuned at producing something that would resonate and persuade. Subliminal messaging was illegal, but if done well, how would anyone know? The bombardment was constant from television, the Internet, billboards; everywhere you went. The promotions would be pushed, the products bought, but what of the side effects?
She inhaled deeply, listening to the burning cherry of her cigarette crackle.
Disbelief and rage. A red glow from the impact of her palm.
Billy’s upset face had never been far from her mind. His angry expression haunting her all day.
Trying to clear it from her mind, she prayed things would settle down and he’d forgive her when they both got back home later this evening.
Guilt had permeated her thoughts, saturating her consciousness.
She was better than that.
They both were.
This afternoon’s nerve-shredding confrontation with Ebon and Lenka was the icing on the cake. Hayley was out of her depth. She needed to bring in a professional psychologist.
Allowing a moment to concentrate on the exhale of smoke, she studied her phone for the twentieth time in as many minutes, but there was still no response from the foster parents. It was no use ringing them. Lee never carried a phone with him, and after taking early retirement spent most of his time in his shed. Dawn was deaf, but kept her phone glued to her side. Hayley had already sent her a text, but still no reply.
‘Mampy taught us how to hide.’ The words from the interview still dominated her thoughts. The scenes of the uncomfortable conversation replaying in her mind.
‘Who is the Ugly?’ Hayley stiffened in her chair.
‘Not who. What,’ Lenka answered, still fixated on her drawing. ‘The Ugly is darkness. It is all the evil you’ve ever known, made into a man. It’s as tall as this room and has shoulders that would barely fit through the door. It’s fat and sweaty, and wheezes like it’s ill.’
Hayley leant across the desk and studied the young girl’s grotesque picture.
‘Are you drawing him now?’
‘Yes,’ Lenka replied. ‘That’s his mouth. It droops and rests on his chest because it’s too big for his face. It doesn’t smile like we do, not that it’s ever really happy. The only happiness it knows comes from the misery of others. You can’t see any teeth, not yet anyway. When it gets you, its mouth opens up like an umbrella and sucks you in. That’s when you see its teeth. That’s when it traps you; halfway in. Peeling back your skin. Making you more naked than you’ve ever been.’ The words she used seemed carefully chosen, like she was repeating a story; recounting a tale that had been told to her by someone much older. ‘It takes hours for the beast to finish you off.’
Trying to ignore the chilling tone in the little girl’s voice, Hayley moved closer to the picture and pointed to its face. She felt the presence of someone behind her. A feeling that she was being watched.
‘Where are its eyes?’ she asked.
‘They’re here,’ Lenka pointed below its furrowed brow. ‘They are small, like little shrivelled currants. They don’t work too good. But it hears okay, and smells really well with its purple nose. That’s how it tracks us.’
‘Ebon?’ Trying to shake the feeling from her shoulders, Hayley offered the girl’s brother a chance to speak.
He took it up willingly, eager to show his knowledge and prove himself better than his sibling.
‘She’s kind of right, but she’s got his belly all wrong. The Ugly is much fatter than her picture. And it’s always hungry. It has a scruffy beard and yellow fingernails that scratch when they catch you.’
The woman’s skin itched, as if preparing to be touched by something unpleasant. Something hovering just behind her. Something foul.
‘What does he want? Why is he after you?’ she asked, trying to probe; to understand what awful truth lay behind this dark imagining.
‘We escaped its lair,’ Lenka answered drawing a dark circle behind the image, leaving Hayley unsure if the girl was drawing a pit or an entrance to a cave.
Sweat seeped from Hayley’s pours, causing her clothes to cling uncomfortably to her body. She wanted to arch her neck, to turnaround and reassure herself that nothing was there, but refused to give in to such unfounded and ridiculous fears.
‘When our parents died we had no one to protect us,’ Ebon expanded. ‘The villagers threw us to the Ugly, leaving us stranded in its lair. They thought if it had us, it would leave their own children alone.’
Hayley shuddered, breaking her adult co
mposure as the influence of their story crawl through her.
‘Mampy saved us,’ Ebon continued. ‘He rescued us. Took us away from the monster and away from the village. When the Ugly found out, it was furious we’d escaped. And once having set eyes on him we were never safe again.’
Lenka stopped drawing again and looked at Hayley with an expressionless face. ‘But Mampy taught us how to hide. How to keep the Ugly at bay.’
At bay—an unusual choice of expression for a child, the social worker noted, trying her hardest to keep herself grounded in professionalism.
‘It likes the smell of children, the taste of us.’ Ebon stared deep into her eyes. ‘We can sour the taste, pollute our systems if we eat the flesh of the screaming. The more they scream, the more they suffer, the longer it lasts. The longer we can hide.’
‘Make them scream so we don’t have to,’ Lenka chipped in.
‘And where is he now?’ Hayley felt another chill creep down her spine, like the sinister tickle of a galloping spider.
‘The Ugly?’ Ebon asked.
‘Yes.’
‘He’s close,’ the small boy replied, bawling his hands tightly into fists, making his knuckles turn white. ‘Winter’s coming.’
‘Don’t get caught,’ Lenka warned before leaning back on her chair, causing it to creak. The sound set Hayley’s teeth on edge.
She glanced between the two, eyeing the pair up. Who was leading whom? Between siblings there was usually one more wilful than the other. One that led the way. One that might carry the delusion stronger. Separating them could help the weaker of the two be free of this nightmarish delusion. But who was it? Ebon and Lenka seemed to be on equal footing, at times speaking like there were one person. Neither’s influence seemed bigger than the other’s.
‘You mentioned your village. Where you came from. Where is that?’ Hayley’s questions were forced from a drying throat.
‘Home,’ came the unhelpful response.
‘Is it far away?’
Year's Best Hardcore Horror Volume 4 Page 23
