S. Bolton - Dead Scared

Bring it on, I muttered as I stepped out, knowing the bravado was to make myself feel better and that it wasn’t really working. It’s one thing to tell yourself all they can do is scare you, but being scared can feel pretty bad when you’re alone in a dark space, at the mercy of people you know to be psychopathic, and without the first clue about what’s going to leap out at you next.

Somehow, I held it together. I walked forward, reached a corner and turned into a narrow, fake-brick-lined alley. It was like something an art student had knocked up in a couple of hours and it was not – not – going to get to me. Neither was the little surprise a few yards ahead, where a spotlight in the ceiling picked out a form on the floor. As I drew closer I could see it was a human figure. Closer still and I knew it wasn’t real. This was a clothes-shop dummy, stripped naked and smeared with fake blood. Joesbury and I had found a very similar one when we’d been investigating the case last year. This was all public knowledge for anyone who looked hard enough and, OK, I was scared, really scared, useless to pretend otherwise any more, but I could deal with being scared. I was getting out of here.

Then the dummy opened its eyes and smiled at me.

When I came to myself again, I was leaning against one of the plywood walls, muttering it’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real, into hands that were damp with sweat.

Shit, it had looked very real. Fighting back the fear that the dummy had risen from the floor and was even now peering over my shoulder, I made myself look. Exactly where it had been, eyes closed, lips still, but for the first time I wasn’t sure how much of this I could cope with. What they had to throw at me, possibly. What my own mind was chucking in for good measure was another matter entirely.

At that moment, the dim lights went out and I was staring into darkness so thick and heavy it could have gone on for ever. Then, some way ahead, a beam of light shone down from the roof. In the pool it made on the dusty warehouse floor stood a man in dark clothes holding a long, gleaming knife.

Ridiculous, I said to myself, as something cold trickled down into the small of my back. Ridiculous, ridiculous. The figure before me – I couldn’t take my eyes off it even to blink – would be nothing more than a plywood cut-out, like the clowns I’d seen earlier in the day.

The figure was moving. OK, real or hallucination? Real or not? I couldn’t tell but I really had to make my mind up fast because he was coming for me. I closed my eyes. Still there when I opened them. Real enough. I turned and ran into blackness.

A second later, I stopped dead. Another spotlight had appeared in the ceiling and a second dark-clad figure was standing right in the middle of the tunnel. Everything about him was in shadow, except the steel of the knife blade that shone in his right hand. I turned again, just as darkness fell once more.

I ran on, arms outstretched, knowing I’d lost all thought of finding a way out. I didn’t care. I just had to get away from the men with knives.

Suddenly, I could see my room. To either side of the door were brick walls – that I knew weren’t real. I stepped up to one, pushed it hard and felt its feet slide along the floor until there was a gap large enough for me to squeeze through.

The first thing I saw on the other side was the carousel. Close by and on its side was the fortune teller’s tent. The Test Your Strength machine had been dismantled and lay in pieces on the floor. This was definitely somewhere I wasn’t meant to be.

‘Laura!’ called a voice, masculine but high-pitched and giggly. ‘Lacey-Laura! Where are you?’ Then the dim lights went out again.

Instinct wanted to run, common sense told me to take it slow, get to the wall and follow it. The window I’d broken that morning might not have been repaired. If I could find that, I’d be out of here.

I crept forward. To my right I thought I could make out one of the scary clowns. It was leaning backwards, as though against … yes, I’d reached the wall.

As I made my way along the side of the building, I wondered why they hadn’t turned on the big warehouse lights. Expecting to be flooded with powerful light any second I made it to the corner. Keep going. While the lights were out, I had a chance. A doorframe. The door opened, I slipped through and couldn’t believe my luck.

I was back in the storeroom that I’d broken into earlier. Light was shining in from street lights outside. Against the window I’d smashed was a piece of heavy cardboard and it took less than a second to pull it from the wall.

It was dark outside. I landed on the flagged path just as Scott Thornton appeared at the corner of the building, blocking my escape. He was dressed exactly as he’d been when he’d burst into my room just days before, naked from the waist up, ninja mask covering his eyes, his long dark curls unmistakable. I looked the other way, more in hope than expectation, to find one of the others at the opposite corner, similarly dressed. Impossible to go back inside. No choice but to go over the fence and into the woods.

I wasn’t able to run fast. Or far. The sedative they’d given me still had too hard a grip. And the hallucinogen really kicked in when I hit fresh air. All around me, colours glowed, the stars were great lanterns hanging close enough to touch and fabulous creatures watched me with huge eyes. The trees took on twisted, torturous shapes, branches reaching down for me as I passed. And with every step I took into those woods, it seemed I was going back in time. My years as a detective slipped away; the new life I’d built for myself from the wreck of my past existence vanished.

I wasn’t Lacey Flint any more, I was that terrified sixteen-year-old girl again, in an open space at midnight, and they were coming.

My last thought, as a hand caught hold of my hair, was that somehow, completely impossible although I knew it to be, they knew after all what scared me the most. Somehow they’d managed to unearth the one memory that I could never allow to come to the surface because everything good and normal and safe that I hold on to would shatter.

I screamed once, a shrill cry that went up through the treetops. Somewhere, from way up high, a bird of prey echoed it back to me.

THE DARK-BLUE SALOON car pulled up and the passenger door opened as if by itself. Joesbury climbed inside. The driver was dressed in the uniform of a porter from the college of St John.

‘Thanks, mate,’ said Joesbury. ‘What’s happening?’

George indicated and pulled out into traffic, causing the driver behind to jump on his brakes and throw both hands in the air.

‘Hammond’s been on to the local chief constable requesting immediate uniform back-up,’ replied George. ‘Locals aren’t happy but they’re going along for now. We’ve put warrants out on Nick Bell and Scott Thornton but no sign of either of them yet. Our application for a warrant on Megan Prince was turned down on the grounds that she died last night. Accident at home, according to the CID report. Fell down the cottage stairs with three-quarters of a bottle of red wine inside her. Interestingly, though, her boyfriend is a fairly senior member of the local CID himself. Bloke called John Castell, another Cambridge graduate. Ring any bells?’

‘Can’t say it does but you’re right, that is interesting. Anything suspicious about Prince’s death?’

‘Not according to initial reports, but it makes you think, doesn’t it?’

Joesbury agreed that it did, indeed, make you think. ‘So they still have us on the run?’ he said.

‘The only one we’ve picked up is Jim Notley, DC Flint’s psycho farmer. He’s in the local nick now, insisting he did nothing more than rent out a piece of land, that he knows nothing about anything and he wants a solicitor. He could be telling the truth. To be honest, he doesn’t seem that bright. We have cars outside 108 St Clement’s Road, Notley’s farm and Dr Oliver’s house. They can’t go in until the warrants are signed. Same at the industrial estate and Bell’s farm. We’ve also got a call out on Talaith Robinson, DC Flint’s room-mate.’