Peter James - Dead Like You

‘Sorry, you can’t take bag. I look after for you.’

Reluctantly she handed it to him. Then he pulled down the metal safety bar and clicked it home, committing her.

‘Smile!’ he said. ‘Enjoy! Is OK, really!’

Shit, she thought. Then she called out to her friends. ‘Char! Karen!’

But the wind whipped her voice away. The car rumbled forward, without warning crashing through double doors into darkness. The doors banged shut behind her and the darkness was total. In contrast to the blustery sea air, in here it was dry and smelt faintly of hot electrical wiring and dust.

The darkness pressed in all around her. She held her breath. Then the car swung sharply right, picking up speed. She could hear the roar of its wheels echoing around the walls; it was like being on a tube train. Streaks of light shot past her on both sides. She heard a ghostly laugh. Tendrils brushed her forehead and her hair, and she screamed in terror, clenching her eyes shut.

This is dumb, she thought. This is so stupid. Why? Why did I do this?

Then the car crashed through more double doors. She opened her eyes to see a long-dead, dusty old man rise up from behind a writing desk and swing head first towards her. She ducked, covering her eyes, her heart pounding, all the courage the alcohol had given her deserting her now.

They went down a sharp incline. She uncovered her eyes to see that the light was fading rapidly and she was back in pitch darkness again. She heard a hissing sound. A hideous, luminous, skeletal snake reared out of the darkness and spat at her, cold droplets of water striking her face. Then a brightly lit skeleton swung out of the darkness and she ducked in terror, convinced it would hit her.

They crashed through more doors. Oh, God, how long was this going to go on for?

They were travelling fast, downhill, in darkness. She heard a screech, then a horrible cackle of laughter. More tendrils touched her, like a spider crawling through her hair. They crashed through more doors, swung sharply left and, quite suddenly, stopped. She sat for a moment in the pitch darkness, shaking. Then suddenly she felt an arm around her neck.

A human arm. She smelt warm breath on her cheek. Then a voice whispered into her ear. A voice she had never heard before.

She froze in blind panic.

‘Got a little extra for you, darling.’

Was this some prank from Char and Karen? Were they in here messing around?

Her brain was racing. Something was telling her this was not part of the ride. That something was badly wrong. The next instant she heard a clang as the safety bar jerked up. Then, whimpering in terror, she was jerked out of the car and dragged quickly over a hard surface. Something sharp bashed into her back and she was pulled through curtains into a room which smelt of oil. She was dropped on her back on to a hard surface. Then she heard the door clang shut. Heard a click that sounded like a switch, followed almost immediately by the grinding sound of heavy machinery. Then a torch was shining into her face, temporarily blinding her.

She stared up, almost paralysed by utter terror and confusion. Who was this? The ride operator she’d met outside?

‘Please don’t hurt me,’ she said.

Through the beam of light she saw the silhouette of a man’s face inside what looked like a nylon stocking with slits in it.

As she opened her mouth and tried to scream, something soft and foul-tasting was rammed into it. She heard a ripping sound and the next instant felt sticky tape being pressed over her lips and around each side of her face. She tried to scream again, but all that came out was a muffled choking sound that seemed to shimmy around inside her head.

‘You’re gagging for it, aren’t you, doll? Dressed like that? Dressed in those shoes!’

She lashed out at him with her fists, pummelling him, trying to scratch him. Then she saw something glint in the darkness. It was the head of a large claw hammer. He was holding it in a latex-gloved hand.

‘Keep still or I’ll fucking hit you.’

She still in terror, staring at the dull metal.

Suddenly she felt a crashing blow to the side of her head. Her brain filled with sparks.

Then silence.

She never felt him entering her or removing her shoes afterwards.

Saturday 10 January

Garry Starling entered the packed China Garden restaurant shortly after 9 p.m. and hurried towards his table, pausing only to order a Tsingtao beer from the manager, who stepped across to greet him.

‘You are late tonight, Mr Starling!’ the jovial Chinese man said. ‘I don’t think your wife is a very happy lady.’

‘Tell me something new!’ Garry replied, palming him a £20 note.

Then he hurried up the steps to his regular table and noticed that the gannets had almost finished the mixed starters. There was one solitary spring roll left in the huge bowl, and the tablecloth was littered with shreds of seaweed and stains from the spilt sauces. All three of them looked like they’d had a good few drinks.

‘Where the sodding hell have you been?’ his wife, Denise, said, greeting him with her customary acidic smile.

‘Actually I’ve been sodding working, my darling,’ he said, giving Maurice’s barmy-looking Earth Mother wife, Ulla, a perfunctory kiss, shaking Maurice’s hand and then sitting in the empty seat between them. He didn’t kiss Denise. He’d stopped greeting her with a kiss back in the year dot.

Turning and staring pointedly at his wife, he said, ‘Working. Right? Working. A word that’s not in your lexicon. Know what it means? To pay for the sodding mortgage. Your sodding credit-card bill.’

‘And your sodding camper van!’

‘Camper van?’ said Maurice, sounding astonished. ‘That’s not your style, Garry.’

‘It’s a VW. The original split-windscreen one. They’re fine investments, very collectable. Thought it would be good for Denise and me to experience the open road, sleeping out in the wild every now and then, get back to nature! I would have bought a boat, but she gets seasick.’

‘It’s midlife crisis, that what it is,’ Denise said to Maurice and Ulla. ‘If he thinks he’s taking me on holiday in a sodding van he can think again! Just like last year, when he tried to get me on the back of his motorbike to go on a blooming camping holiday in France!’

‘It’s not a sodding van!’ Garry said, grabbing the last spring roll before anyone else could get it, dipping it by mistake in the hot sauce and cramming it into his mouth.

A small thermonuclear explosion took place inside his head, rendering him temporarily speechless. Denise took good advantage of it.

‘You look like shit!’ she said. ‘How did you get that scratch on your forehead?’

‘Crawling up in a sodding loft, trying to replace an alarm wire bloody mice had eaten. A nail sticking out of a rafter.’

Denise suddenly leaned closer to him and sniffed. ‘You’ve been smoking!’

‘I was in a taxi where someone had been smoking,’ he mumbled a little clumsily, chewing.

‘Oh, really?’ She gave him a disbelieving look, then turned to their friends. ‘He keeps pretending he’s quit, but he thinks I’m stupid! He goes out to take the dog for a walk, or a bike ride, or to take his motorbike for a spin, and comes back hours later stinking of fags. You can always smell it on someone, can’t you?’ She looked a Ulla, then at Maurice and swigged some Sauvignon Blanc.

Garry’s beer arrived and he took a long pull, glancing first at Ulla, thinking that her mad hair looked even madder than usual tonight, and then at Maurice, who looked more like a toad than ever. Both of them, and Denise as well, looked strange, as if he was seeing them through distorting glass. Maurice’s black T-shirt stretched out over his pot belly, his eyes bulged out of their sockets and his expensive, hideous checked jacket, with its shiny Versace buttons, was too tight. It looked like a hand-me-down from an older brother.