Blackstoke

by Rob Parker

  It was Jacob’s latest guinea pig. Half-skinned, half-twisted apart, skewered on a spike.

  Alice’s world span with sudden violence, and before she could even compute her shock, she was on her knees expelling her breakfast onto the cut green grass.

  Gasping for air, choking the bile back down, she suddenly felt very alone and exposed. It was the quiet. Everything had gone so still. No sound from the rutted field behind, no rustle from the trees. No bird song.

  And then a low hum, behind her. A murmur, on a solid note. Deep, but not too deep.

  She began to tremble.

  She wanted her mum.

  The hum quickly dropped into something guttural, primal. A growl.

  And she felt a thud on the back of her head, heavy and deep, which immediately brought a sensation of strange detachment.

  Then nothing.

  39

  Christian skipped across the mud to the driver’s side of the van, parked at the bottom of the tower, and peered inside—only to find it empty. A handful of newspapers rested on the passenger seat, but there was nothing else in there to indicate signs of life.

  He turned to peer up at the tower. He guessed it was maybe fifty feet in height, with a small room on the top, lined with windows, and a railing around which one could walk and peer out on the open air. Below, and reaching all the way to the ground, was a spiral staircase, tightly wound.

  Suddenly begot by nerves, he took a second. What on earth was this all about? What was it for?

  It looked old, the white paint on the little shack up there dirty and tired, while the metal work propping it heavenwards was chipped, scuffed up. It had been there a long time, quite clearly. Decades, at least.

  Christian suddenly felt isolated, and very uneasy. So he shouted, as loud as he dared.

  ‘Hello?’

  No response, just the shush of the breeze. After a moment, he tried again.

  ‘Anybody there?’

  He waited as his thoughts drifted to climbing the stairs and going to have a look for himself. Just because the car was here, didn’t necessarily mean that the driver was up there, right?

  Christian looked around. There was literally nothing else here. Just a big tower in the woods, next to a dirt track.

  Then he heard a door open with a squeak of hinges, and a clunk of footsteps. He looked up, and a man appeared at the nearside railing of the tower platform, gazing down at him.

  ‘Hello?’ the man shouted.

  ‘Hi, yes!’ Christian shouted, waving his arms. From what he could see, the man was grey-haired and moustached in the same tone. Sixties, maybe—and he wore a blue shirt. Jowls for days.

  ‘Can I help you?’ the man shouted.

  ‘I’m a resident here, just wondering what was here, and… well, I was looking for you, if I’m honest. Are you security?’

  ‘That’s me,’ said the man. Christian couldn’t get a good look at the guy, because the bright greyness of the sky behind offered him a soft silhouette.

  ‘Great, can I come up?’

  ‘No, health and safety. I’m just observing from up here.’

  What he was observing, Christian didn’t know. The completed part of the development was a mile from here, but yet again, his interest was sparked, snagged and he found himself walking to the bottom step. ‘I’ll only be a minute,’ he said. He was good at this, getting his own way. Sometimes, if you wanted to do something, the best way was with a grand smile, a happy demeanour and to just do it anyway.

  ‘Wait a minute…’ shouted the man at the top, but Christian couldn’t hear any more over the clang of his footsteps. It took him longer than expected to reach the top, such was the tight coil of the staircase, but within a couple of minutes, he found himself emerging onto the platform, to be met by the man himself, who had been waiting for him. ‘You shouldn’t be up here,’ he said gruffly, the moustache quivering side to side as he pursed his lips and worked his jaw. ‘What do you want?’

  Christian gave his brightest smile, and stepped out towards the railing. Suddenly aware of the height, he grabbed it with both hands wide apart. ‘Wow,’ he breathed, as he gazed out. You couldn’t really describe the view as impressive, but the height gave a perspective of the area Christian simply hadn’t experienced before—and in turn this brought understanding and comprehension to the development’s geography. ‘I didn’t know it was so big.’

  The other man sighed and joined him, but Christian was already moving, walking around to take in the views on the other four sides. Trees in most directions, but they were punctuated by clearings. ‘Blackstoke is a big area,’ he said, when he finally caught up with him.

  ‘Sorry, I just… I’ve been trying to make sense of the layout of the place, then I saw your van, and this… Oh, I’m Christian.’ He offered the security guard his hand, which the man took.

  ‘Jeff,’ said the man, taking his hand. He wasn’t smiling, but he wasn’t cold in his demeanour either.

  ‘I live on Broadoak.’

  ‘Settling in alright?’

  ‘Yes, so far so good. For the most part.’ Christian’s mind was racing now, that childlike sense of story coming alive like it so often did. ‘What is this?’

  ‘It’s exactly what it looks like. It’s where I come and watch over things.’

  ‘And, where are our houses exactly?’

  Jeff pointed off in a north easterly direction, and, with a squint, Christian could make out the roofs of Broadoak. ‘Ah I see. Thank you.’ Questions sprang forth in his head. Why on earth would you come way out here to keep an eye on something that’s all the way over there? He didn’t ask that one, but did ask another. ‘How long has this been here?’

  ‘Years. Like I said, it’s a big property.’ Christian regarded him properly. He was weathered and portly, his powder blue uniform shirt gripping him snugly. But there was a cast to his gaze. A veil over it. Suspicion.

  ‘We’ve had a couple of things been going on, over our way. I wondered if you could come take a look, put our mind at ease.’

  The change in Jeff was as obvious as night to day, with no time for dawn in between. ‘What?’ His eyes were suddenly bright, and wider, revealing they were as grey as the strands on his head.

  ‘Yeah, I wanted to see if there had been any other reports, anything else out of the ordinary?’

  ‘Not that I know of,’ he said. The answer didn’t tally with his sudden animation.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Christian felt stupid asking it, but found he simply couldn’t avoid it.

  ‘Of course I’m sure.’ Jeff’s tone darkened, and became more dismissive.

  ‘Well would you mind coming over and letting me talk you through our concerns?’

  ‘Our?’

  ‘Yeah, there’s been more than one… complaint.’

  ‘Oh.’ That seemed to trouble Jeff, whose expression adopted a sudden hangdog quality.

  Christian’s eyes were drawn to a vast gap in the trees, behind Jeff’s shoulder. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘What?’

  Christian pointed with an outstretched finger. ‘That.’ There was, a few hundred yards away, a huge clearing in the woodland, and, although from this position he couldn’t make out the ground, he saw that it was a gigantic space that had been cut away—and further to that, he could just make out the peaks of piles of rubble within that space. A number of them—a miniature mountain range of discarded stone and upheaval.

  ‘Ah, that’s—’

  Jeff’s words were interrupted by a car door closing, a soft thunk-click of metal and catch carried forth on the wind. Christian’s stomach dropped, and carried on falling.

  The car. He’d locked it. Hadn’t he?

  He sprinted over to the other side of the watchtower platform, overlooking the car below, and looked down. The car was sat there as normal.

  ‘What?’ said Jeff, catching up with him.

  ’Who else is out here?’ Christian stammered.

  ‘There shouldn’t be anyone.
’

  Before the words had left Jeff’s mouth, Christian was sprinting down the steps—why were they so close? Why so tight? In a couple of agonising moments, he’d reached the bottom. He didn’t pause, running straight for the car, his shoulders wracking with tension.

  He saw his nightmare through the window before he threw open the rear door anyway.

  Olivia was gone.

  40

  Wendy Fenchurch picked up the tin bucket at the back door, and ambled round the side pathway of the house to the back garden. It was half-full of potting compost, not too heavy, but she still perhaps should have asked Quint to come and take it for her. Shouldn’t take too many chances with her back, not at her age. He’d brought it to the back door for her initially, before retreating to whatever scheme he was working on in his office. He thought he was being so clever with that new camera of his, and it made Wendy smile. The fact that it was Wendy herself letting him feel like that, by not saying anything to burst his bubble, made her smile even more. He’d gotten himself in a tizz, and he needed to work it out, plain and simple. Burn off that excess energy. Besides, it kept him busy.

  She wandered down the pathway, leaning heavily to one side to counter the weight of the bucket, taking easy sure steps. She’d been sat on the back step, using the compost to pot a set of indoor house plants in quaint ceramic planters. It was the perfect spot, where the soil could be swept out the back door easily enough. She surveyed the back garden as she walked, looking for potential, rather than the present. There was a lot they could do with this blank space, but it was definitely a question of first things first. Come summer time, it would be a wonderful project to bask in.

  She reached the back potting shed, which she had specifically asked to be installed before their arrival, having paid a rather handsome premium for the privilege, and opened the door. Out wafted an earthen smell of freshly coated timber, compost and engine oil—all the key ingredients for an outbuilding such as this, and a fragrance of comfort for those green-fingered enough to recognise them. They promised solitude and honest work.

  She was so happy it was theirs. Their previous terraced home hadn’t offered much opportunity for her to practice any truly ambitious horticultural exploits, but now, the gloves were off. Unless they were green, in which case, they were certainly on.

  She walked to the right-hand counter, over which a window looked out upon her fledgling domain, and placed the bucket on top with a heave, sitting it alongside the carefully laid out rows of pansies they’d bought only yesterday at the local garden centre. They all still sat in their plastic nursery planters, waiting to be given their proper homes. It made Wendy smile.

  As she began pulling out yet more little pots, and filled them with soil from the bucket with a small trowel, she noticed a second odour. A sickly sweetness. Just a soupçon, over the other notes in the shed. She moved to check the pansies, one at a time, sure that she must have been sold a rotten one accidentally. However, they were all in perfect condition. Some looked a little withered, granted, but on average, they were a good-looking crop.

  There was a sharp scrape behind her, like a shoe on gravel, and abruptly, she felt a sharp pain in her neck. It was there only an instant before the pain gave immediate way to a dullness. It moved to numbness, which flooded up the back of her head, and round to her jaw, which she felt sag—just like her knees, which promptly buckled. She folded onto her back, and felt no pain from the impact either. Lying there, on the floor, she couldn’t feel a thing—but she could hear a spurt spurt just below her chin. With every spurt, she detected a disembodied pressure, somewhere around her.

  Her eyes could still move, and she looked as far down her body as she could. The handle of the trowel—the brand-new trowel she had excitedly bought last night to plant her pansies with—was sticking out of her neck. And the spurting was blood, her own blood, gushing out in streams up past the handle, steaming mid-flight as it hit the crisp winter air.

  As she watched it go, she saw something else, hovering above her—but she couldn’t focus on it. It moved towards her at speed, before she realised it was a bare foot, filthy in a way she could barely imagine. As soon as she worked out what it was, it connected with her face, right in the centre, and everything went numb and off centre, a shattered kaleidoscope of nerve-endings. The foot came down again and again. And again and again. Until all she could think of, was her pansies.

  41

  Peter had only just got home from work, he was immediately met on the drive by Pam, who came out of the house to see him. This never happened. Or hadn’t happened in a long time, so it took him by surprise—so much so that, he found himself on edge before he even exited the car.

  ‘Have you seen Alice?’ she asked, her eyes stricken. Her posture was wrought with tension, her shoulders jutting her arms out at near right angles. Shouldering his bag, he stepped out onto the driveway.

  ‘No, I’ve been at work all day,’ he said, glancing at the house behind, his eyes scanning the windows as if his daughter might just be sat there looking at them, enjoying this sudden fuss.

  ‘We’ve been back a couple of hours, and she hasn’t come home from school.’

  ‘Did you call the school?’ Peter walked to the house, the first prangs of anxiety taking root and blooming.

  ‘Of course, but the office was shut. She usually gets back about 4, I gave it until 4.45, but they’d obviously gone.’

  Peter checked his own watch. Five twenty. ‘Okay, well, have you tried her phone?’

  ‘No answer.’ Pam’s voice was breaking.

  ‘Shit. Ummm…’ He stood there on the step to their house, running a hand through his hair. ‘We need to go looking for her.’

  ‘Do you think I should call the police?’

  Peter thought about it. Teenage girls and lengths of time missing and all that. The telly shows always said something about them not being able to declare someone missing for yadda yadda however long—but this was a teenager. And it was his teenager. Fighting against the innate Britishness of not wanting to cause a fuss, he nodded. ‘I think it couldn’t harm.’

  There was a screech and a sweep of lights swiped across them both, and they both turned to see a car appear coming down the street at speed. It was plush with a luxurious black paint job, going far too fast, and stopped outside the Fletcher house opposite. The politician himself immediately hopped out. This conspicuous entrance had a hypnotic effect on the Wests, who could only stand there and watch. Fletcher saw them and immediately crossed the road and walked up their drive.

  ‘I’ve got it!’ he said, pulling some paperwork from his inner jacket pocket. ‘All approved!’

  ‘What is?’ asked Peter.

  ‘The Neighbourhood Watch of course, partner!’ Fletcher smiled and clasped Peter’s shoulder holding the piece of paper out like the Olympic torch. Peter absent-mindedly reached for it, but Fletcher whisked it away straight back into his pocket.

  ‘Oh it’s just admin Peter, nothing to see,’ he shushed, and Peter wondered if this man ever did anything that wasn’t deeply embellished in political flourish.

  ‘Okay, well—’ Peter said, but Pam butted in.

  ‘Have you seen Alice? On the road, walking up here?’

  ‘Alice…’ Fletcher let the word hang, his eyes asking the question.

  ‘Our daughter. Fifteen?’

  ‘Oh yes, the eldest, yes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not.’

  Pam ran her own hand through her own hair this time and muttered: ‘Jesus.’

  ‘What would you do?’ asked Peter, stepping forward, his arms and appealing in a question of his own.

  ‘How do you mean? What’s happened?’

  ‘She’s missing,’ Pam blurted, urgently.

  ‘She hasn’t come home from school,’ Peter clarified. ‘She had a dentist appointment at lunch, then was supposed to come straight there. But she’s not here.’

  ‘Well, did she make the appointmen
t?’ Fletcher asked.

  Pam and Peter looked at each other, epiphany dawning across each mind simultaneously. ‘I’ll call the surgery,’ said Pam, turning to the front door hurriedly, when another screech, and another set of headlights carved the street in two.

  This time, all three turned to see what was happening, and watched a silver saloon race down the cul-de-sac. As it got closer, Peter could make out mud on the flanks of the otherwise plush vehicle. It paused for a second outside the Lyons home, but then sped up and pulled to an abrupt stop outside the Wests.

  Christian Lyons got out, sodden and muddy, his face caved by panic, his teeth bared, panting near maniacally.

  ‘She’s gone,’ he panted. ‘Olivia is gone. She’s been taken.’

  42

  Quint emerged from his office when he realised the sun was setting, having spent the entirety of the afternoon combing through each and every trail cam video file at double speed—looking for any sign of that bald headed figure, scampering through their neighbourhood. Alas, there had been nothing, and the evening had drawn in regardless, leaving him sat alone in darkness in the upstairs office of their home. Shutting down the computer, he rubbed his eyes with a finger poked behind both frames of his spectacles, and rose.

  Emerging onto the upstairs hallway, he was confused to see that the lights were off everywhere—and with the landing carrying somewhat of a mezzanine design, offering views of the open-plan living area below, it gave him the distinct impression that the whole house was in darkness.

  ‘Wen?’ he shouted. ‘Love?’

  The only thing he could hear was the low hum of the fridge in the kitchen below. He shrugged, and realised she mustn’t have realised the darkness herself. I bet she’s in the potting shed, he thought, with a smile to himself. He liked the idea of that for her—that they’d have such activities to keep them occupied in their new lives here. A life with no stresses as they sailed into serious old age, or at least that was the idea.