Alan Baxter - The Gulp - Five Tales of Horror

“One, two, Freddie’s coming for you,” Dace muttered, and a slightly deranged giggle escaped. “Three, four, hope you haven’t locked your door.”

He had no idea how to break into houses. If they’d left the back door unlocked and he could sneak in while they slept, he would be happy.

Beside his outfit – disguise? – was a large carving knife from his kitchen. It terrified him to look at it. He’d done some less than savoury things for Carter over the years, but nothing explicitly violent. Carter preferred a personal hands-on approach to any violence that needed doling out, thankfully. Dace had once joined in with a beating, but even then he’d only thrown in a couple of half-arsed punches while Carter and Stephen did the large proportion of the work. But if the Nikolovs weren’t asleep, or if he woke them, he would need something to enforce his authority. And he might need to wake them and force them to tell him where the money was, but he hoped not. With any luck, waving the knife around would be as violent as he needed to get.

He also had a small Maglight torch, one of the six-inch models, and he’d put fresh batteries in it. Perfect for snooping around quietly in a house at night. The last item was a plain black backpack. He hoped to fill it with the cash the Nikolovs apparently had stashed away, but he could also take other stuff if there wasn’t enough money. If they had laptops or something, maybe he could sell them at the pub on Saturday night. He’d be hard pressed to raise sixty grand with stolen household items, but desperation drove his thinking.

“They’ve got the money,” he said to himself, willing it to be true. “They’ve got more than I need stashed somewhere, and I’ll sneak in while they’re asleep, I’ll find it without waking them, and I’ll sneak out again. Easy as.”

He swallowed down a rill of panic, nodded to himself. Let that be true. He changed into the Freddie outfit, cut the tag from the driver’s gloves and slipped them on. They were good quality, thin leather like a second skin, and fitted well. He put the mask, torch and kitchen knife into the backpack and sat on the sofa. His phone said 11.15pm. How long should he wait? An old eccentric couple were likely to be early to bed, early to rise sort of people, right? 1am, he decided. He’d leave at 1am and be back by 2 with all his problems solved.

He turned on the TV, poured a generous shot of Wild Turkey to steady his nerves, and stared at Friday night bullshit programming while he waited.

At 12.20 nervous energy drove him up from the couch. He didn’t dare drink any more, and he could wait no longer. It was only about a five-minute walk to the end of Kurrajong Street where it met Tanning at a T-junction. About another five minutes south along Tanning would take him to the house with the guinea pigs in the yard. The spring night was cooling but he didn’t need the sweater. It also occurred to him that he would look obvious in it if anyone drove by and saw him. He pulled it off and stuffed it into the backpack, then peeled off the gloves and put them in his hip pocket. He’d put it all back on, and the mask, when he got to the house.

What the hell was he doing? For a moment, he nearly bolted back inside. Then Carter’s voice echoed through his thoughts again. I know your parents well, and where they live on the north side of town. And your sister visits often, even though she lives in Sydney now. Something to keep in mind.

He couldn’t be responsible for the death of his whole family. The idea had floated through a couple of times in the hours since Carter’s ultimatum. Once or twice he’d thought maybe he could live with it. His parents were in their late 60s, retired. Not old by any means, but not young. His sister was a pain in the arse most of the time. But then he would quickly shake off the thought. He loved them, even his fucking sister if he was honest. He couldn’t let them die, much less be responsible for their deaths. He had to at least try to save them.

With the bag slung over one shoulder, he set off along Kurrajong, downhill towards the junction. He crossed the road before he passed The Vic at the end, kept his head down and hurried right onto Tanning and walked quickly up hill, past the medical centre, past Carlton Beach on the other side of the road. A group of four people stood in the park behind Carlton Beach, not far from the play area. An old man, a middle-aged man and woman, and a young girl he recognised from Woollies. Strange bunch to be there so late at night, he thought. They all looked pale in the light of the moon, standing still, staring out at the ocean. But Dace was too distracted to think much on it and kept walking.

He crossed onto the east side of Tanning Street as he passed St Augustine’s Primary. He didn’t remember exactly where the guinea pig house was, only that it was somewhere between the school and the Ocean Blue Motel.

Most of the houses were single storey, 60s and 70s homes like his parents’ house on the north side of town. Some weatherboard, some brick, most with metal roofs. He glanced into each low-walled front yard, looking for the stacks of chicken wire cages. He heard the whiffling and caught a scent of hay right before he came to the place. Cages three deep along both wooden side fences and up against the brick house. A single storey row sat along the front garden wall, brick only a metre or so high that had been plastered over, but the whitewashed plaster was crumbling away in places. The house was run down, certainly not the sort of place a rich person would inhabit. But it did look like the sort of place that might belong to people who hoarded their money. The window frames were painted pale yellow, but the paint was peeling. The corrugated steel roof had more patches of rust than clear metal. Half a hay bale sat on the scrubby grass in the centre of the small front yard. Guinea pigs by the dozen scratched and whistled plaintively in the cages.

Dace ducked back and saw that the house next door, entirely clean and well-maintained, had a large frangipani tree in their front yard, casting a pool of shadow. He hopped over their wall and scurried into that darkness and crouched down, heart beating hard. For a couple of minutes, he watched the footpath and the street, kept glancing back at the house behind him. Nothing. No one about, not even cars passing.

He took a deep, shuddering breath, then blew it out slowly, his cheeks filling. “All right, Dace. You got this. Let’s go.”

He pulled out the Freddie sweater and put it on, then the thin leather gloves. He slipped the kitchen knife into the large thigh pocket of his cargoes, careful to wedge the point into one corner so it didn’t stick his leg, and put the torch into his hip pocket. Then he put the backpack on properly over both shoulders and took another deep breath as he held the rubber mask in both hands.

“You got this,” he said again, and pulled the mask over his head. It was well-detailed with all Freddie’s burn scars. He tucked the skirt of it into the ragged neck of the sweater. It smelled of rubber and old sweat, rough and a little tacky on the inside. The fit was fairly good, lining up well with his eyes, but he still lost at least fifty per cent of his peripheral vision. His breath was suddenly hot and close, despite the small mouth hole.

He checked the road out front again, making sure there were no cars or pedestrians, then hopped over the wall to the footpath and immediately ran along two metres and jumped back over Nikolov’s wall. There was a path down the side of the house, deep in shadow, and he hurried into it. As soon as the darkness covered him, he slowed to a creep, heart racing. Committed to the course of action now, he tried not to think. When he got to their back yard, four times the size of the small patch out front, he paused in surprise.