Stephen Booth - Already Dead

‘Too late, Charlie,’ she said.

He looked up. ‘What?’

‘I said “too late”.’

And she was right. Again.

Dean twisted round when he caught the flash of light in his wing mirror. He couldn’t see the make of the other car as it turned the corner near the woods and came slowly down the road. Its lights were on full beam, and they dazzled him, so that he had to raise a hand to shield his eyes from the glare.

At first he thought the driver was intending to go straight past them, as most people would. Everybody was reluctant to stop and help strangers, especially late at night and in a remote spot like this. You just never knew what might happen, or who you were dealing with.

But the car braked and drew in to the side of the road. Dean found himself praying that the driver wouldn’t be someone he knew. They weren’t all that far from home, just a few miles outside Wirksworth. And so far tonight his luck hadn’t been good. He’d already missed the chance to push Sheena into the ditch and make her hide. They were picked out in those headlights like a pair of sitting ducks.

For a moment, the doors of the car remained closed. Who was sitting in there behind that glare? It wouldn’t be a woman on her own, at least. No solitary female would have stopped in these circumstances. It was much too risky. It would have to be a man, perhaps two or more.

Dean began to get anxious now. He started to calculate what possessions he had on him that might be valuable to robbers — about two hundred pounds in cash, his credit cards, an iPhone, a decent watch. And of course there was the BMW itself. If they could get it out of the mud, they were welcome to it. There was nothing else of any value.

‘Who is it, Charlie?’ asked Sheena plaintively.

‘I’ve no idea. Just keep quiet. Let me do the talking.’

He thought he heard her snort. She had an unappealing little derisive laugh that irritated him sometimes. But perhaps she was just catching a cold standing in the rain. He had a mental image of a sniffling Sheena with a red nose and watering eyes, her bag stuffed with tissues. That would be just great.

As he waited, Dean wiped the rain from his face and pulled up his collar. He was ready to run, if necessary. If there were two or three of them, it would be hopeless trying to resist. He pictured himself racing through the mud and hurling himself across the ditch into the trees, where he could disappear into the dark. They would never pursue him through the woods. He wasn’t worth that much bother. Darkness was definitely his friend.

But just one man got out of the car. He stood behind the headlights, so that Dean couldn’t see him at all, except for an impression of a large, bulky figure glistening with water, an outline that looked entirely the wrong shape for a human being.

‘Hello?’ said Dean tentatively. His voice sounded weak, and he decided to try again. ‘Hello?’

When the man finally moved forward into the light, Dean saw that he was wearing a heavy rain jacket. It had a peaked hood and a double storm flap that fastened across the front of his face, obscuring his features, except for a pair of deep-set eyes faintly visible inside the hood. The expression in those eyes was one that Dean hardly dared to analyse. It made him look away uncomfortably, his skin tightening with unease.

‘Trouble?’ The voice that came from inside the hood was strangely hoarse. The man seemed to be breathing heavily, as if he’d been running or exerting himself for the last few minutes, rather than just having stepped out of a car.

‘We’re stuck in the mud,’ said Dean, though he thought it ought to have been obvious to anyone, even with eyes like that.

‘So I see.’

‘Perhaps a bit of a push?’

‘No problem.’

Dean got behind wheel and the stranger positioned himself at the back of the car with his hands braced against the boot. A few seconds later, the BMW had finally churned and skidded its way back onto the road. It sat slightly askew on the carriageway, liquid mud dripping from its rear bumper, steam rising from the bonnet and mingling with the rain.

Dean slid down the driver’s window and tried to locate the stranger in the darkness.

‘Oh, that’s great. Thanks,’ he called. ‘We can be on our way at last.’

‘It’s a bad night to get yourself stuck like that.’

‘Yes, but- Well, we’re fine now — thanks to you. So off we go, eh?’

He knew he was sounding too hasty and nervous, but he couldn’t help it. He just wanted this man to go and leave them alone. He would have felt happier if he’d still been struggling with the car. Somebody else would have come along eventually. Somebody a bit more … normal.

Dean peered into the night, disorientated by the lights and the drumming of the rain on the roof of the car. It was suddenly hurtling down, bouncing off the road and blurring the windscreen.

‘I’m sorry? You were saying?’

The voice came from a direction he wasn’t expecting. Dean realised that the stranger had moved closer to the side of the car without him noticing it, and he was now standing by the open window. Why did that feel so much like a threat?

‘Thank you very much again for the help. But we really ought to be getting along now.’

‘Are you in a hurry, then?’

Right up close, Dean saw that the rain jacket was red. He could see an expanse of fabric in front of his eyes, a deep, wet red that made him think only of one thing. Blood.

Though he was anxious to escape, he could hardly tear his gaze away from the glistening redness a few inches from his face. He began to think that he could actually smell blood on the air. His head swam, and he felt nauseous. In his wavering vision, the fabric of the jacket became a side of beef, the skin freshly peeled away to expose the red slabs of muscle underneath. When the man moved, leaning closer to the window, rain gathered and pooled in the folds of his jacket, dark splashes of water dripping on to the paintwork of the car.

‘I … I…’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s late,’ said Dean. ‘You’re out late, too.’

The man grunted. Dean wanted to get a look at his eyes again, but his courage failed him. Instead, he tried a laugh, and nodded towards Sheena.

‘She hates to be late for anything. Always blames me, of course. Says I’ll be late for my own funeral. We’re expected … somewhere, you see. But with all this rain and everything, and the mud. Well…’

Of course, Dean knew he was beginning to sound hysterical. He glared at Sheena, who still said nothing, clutching her coat up to her ears, her eyes wide. She looked as though she was frozen to the spot.

‘Should you get in the car, dear?’ said Dean loudly.

She stared at him stupidly, a rabbit in the headlights. Literally, almost. She was a scared animal, waiting for someone to tell her what to do next.

He tried to make his voice sound firmer: ‘Get in, Sheena.’

But he was betrayed by a tremble on the last word, the final vowel sound cracking and pitching too high, like the voice of a pubescent schoolboy. It made him sound as though he was asking a question. Begging or pleading, even.

At last she moved. The passenger door opened and she squelched into the BMW, fumbled automatically with the seat belt. Dean winced when he thought of the damage to his leather seats from the water.

‘Bye, then,’ he said, and pressed the button to wind up the window. With that thin sheet of glass between him and the stranger, he instantly felt safer.

‘Where did he come from?’ said Sheena, when the windows were safely closed.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did he come out of the woods?’

‘I couldn’t see.’

‘He scared me, Charlie.’