Horror showcase, p.11
Horror Showcase, page 11
The text on the neon display boards refreshed, he scanned down the destinations and saw that he had just under ten minutes before his train was due out.
Edwin finally had the nerve to glance over at the shop where the assistant appeared to be in a heated argument with a little old woman, and the girl seemed close to tears. He smiled to himself, which was good. If she was to remember anything about today, it would be the old woman giving her grief. Edwin would be just another anonymous customer.
After he’d unscrewed the bottle and emptied the contents in four gulps, Edwin felt a little better.
The bag contained just under one hundred thousand pounds in used notes, until yesterday, it had belonged to someone else. He vaguely wondered how long it would be before it was discovered missing. A week? A month? Edwin didn’t care, he was sure that it wouldn’t be traced to him.
The bottle was disposed of, making his way to the ticket gates, Edwin’s stomach rumbled as he passed a Burger King. He checked the prices, which he could easily afford, but it would mean opening the bag again in public and the first time had been bad enough.
He’d get something to eat once the train was moving. He’d have a quick wander to one of the toilets on the train to remove a bundle, he should have thought of that earlier. As he was bustled through the gate, he actually began to smile; it looked like he was going to get away with it after all.
2
The carriage he’d chosen hadn’t been too full, just a smattering businessmen and a couple of students, there were no parents with screaming brats nor groups of annoying teenagers, his nerves has been scraped raw as it was without adding to the problem.
He had planned to spend the three hour journey up to Newcastle either staring out of the window or snoozing. Edwin needed some peace and quiet so he could wrap his head round what he was going to do next. Having some sort of plan would help.
Plans? Ha! If he hadn’t been so impulsive, he wouldn’t have been in this mess in the first place.
The train started to slow down, he watched the students get up and remove their rucksacks before walking up the gangway towards the exit. That was a shame, he was hoping that they’d stay in the carriage all the way to Newcastle, both were very pretty. The students ran up to a couple of young man and embraced. It was such an idyllic scene.
Edwin sighed and closed his eyes, enjoying the Saturday morning sun warm his face. Looking back, he found it incredible how just one casual remark could drastically alter his life and cause the death of another.
Edwin Calhoun was, by trade, a window cleaner. After he’d left the army six years before, it had been the only job he could get. Well that wasn’t strictly true, with his build and experience, Edwin could have walked into any security job in Leeds, unfortunately the vast majority of jobs would have involved working at night and that would have been a major problem for him.
Edwin Calhoun had an obsessive fear of the night. While he was in the service, the rigid life of the army had helped him keep his disadvantage under wraps but now in civilian life, the problem became intolerable.
Edwin felt the train start to move off.
His life as a window cleaner had been barely tolerable, although his was his own boss and was able to work when he wanted, the money was just rubbish, each week, he found himself with less and less. The only thing that kept him going was that, once the sun started to dip he knew he would be able to go home, lock his door and be safe inside his flat. Safe in the knowledge that he wouldn’t have to step out again until dawn broke.
Yesterday afternoon had started in the usual way, he only had three customers all day, two in the morning and one just after two o clock. Edwin had always considered his last customer to be a bit of an enigma. He seemed pleasant enough and always tipped well but there was something about him that just didn’t sit right. Edwin found out a couple of weeks ago that the man was just a lowly police constable which surprised him. He lived alone, in a large detached house decked out with all the latest mod-cons. Not that Edwin would ever discuss this, you didn’t. It was part of that unspoken trust between window cleaner and the client.
The fellow was waiting at his gate when Edwin pulled up in his van. Even before he got out, he could see that the man was three sheets to the wind. Edwin licked his lips, it had been a hot day and a cold beer would go down a treat.
He usually called into the pub after his second job but the old lady had stuffed him full of cake and tea so this week he had given it a miss but sat behind the wheel, watching that man pour beer down his neck as if it was going out of fashion gave him an incredible thirst.
Edwin then made that impulsive remark; he asked him if he had a spare can. His face almost split with a grin.
“So the strong silent one does speak.” He said. “I’ve got a better idea. Forget the windows, they’ll make ok for another week. Let’s go into the back garden, we can spend the rest of the day talking bollocks and getting drunk.”
Edwin followed the man into the house, he scurried off into the kitchen and left Edwin standing on the welcome mat in the hallway, he didn’t follow him, it seemed impolite.
Through the open door, he watched him search through the massive grey refrigerator, Edwin couldn’t work out whether he was talking to himself or had presumed that Edwin was still behind him. He shrugged and walked through into the man’s kitchen.
He still had his head buried in the fridge and asking Edwin’s opinion about if Leeds had a chance against Liverpool on Saturday. Edwin stayed silent; he had no interest in football so was unable to offer any thoughts on the matter.
He began to wonder it this really was such a good idea. What did he have in common with this stranger? Edwin had never really been the type to mix and pretending to be sociable just to get a beer off him made Edwin feel like a hypocrite. Still, it was a warm day.
Edwin tuned the man out and examined the kitchen. Like the rest of the house, it was packed with really expensive gadgets. He couldn’t understand how he was able to afford it. Were coppers so well paid?
He wasn’t married and he’d seen no evidence of a shared occupant, besides this was a domain of a single man that was obvious from the amount of mess scattered around. Edwin’s eye stopped roaming when he glanced at the cover over the dining table, the tablecloth was laid out perfectly apart from the ends. He could see the polished wooden surface from this position while at the other end, the cloth was draped over a chair, as if to conceal something.
The man was still deep in the fridge so he crouched down and looked under the table, what he saw almost took his breath away. There were bundles of used notes spilling out of a leather bag. He had never seen so much money. He stood up just as the man turned and passed him a beer.
Edwin popped the top and took a couple of gulps. It wasn’t fair, why should this gormless looking idiot have it so easy. Why should he have to work every fucking day to scrounge a pittance while this flashy fucker lives like a king?
Edwin could feel the half full can or beer being crushed in his hand; he saw the look of alarm on the man’s face. Edwin thought about having to go back to that foul three room flat when something inside him snapped.
3
Edwin jerked awake, oh fuck. He wanted to kick himself for dozing off. If he fell asleep, he would be vulnerable. The other man had been vulnerable and look what happened to him. In the army, he’d managed to stay awake for nearly four days. If he could do it then he could do it now.
He knew he hadn’t slept a wink last night, he supposed the excitement plus the adrenalin and the need to destroy the evidence that Edwin had been in the house were the main reasons. The money could not have belonged to the man, no way, not that much. Where he’d got it from didn’t really matter to him. Whether it was a dodgy deal with some drug smugglers or stolen from the evidence locker at work, he knew that someone would come looking for it eventually.
The scenario that Edwin had tried to create when the real owners of that cash did break into the man’s house were that the bloke done a runner with the money.
He was no longer alone. Sat across the table was a very tall man wearing an expensive looking dark blue suit, most of his body and face hid behind a newspaper. Judging from the deep winkles in his hands, he wasn’t exactly a spring chicken. He must have got on when the students left.
Why in God’s name did he have to go and sit opposite him? The carriage was almost fucking empty.
Edwin wanted to move but he couldn’t, he daren’t. He needed to remain inconspicuous, to be just another commuter. He tucked the bag further behind his feet. Maybe he should just get off at the next station and catch the next train. Hell, forget about the next train, maybe if it would be a better idea to just find some anonymous Bed and Breakfast in the next town and get some sleep. He was out of Yorkshire now, not that anybody would be looking for him; he’d made sure of that. Yes, he was beginning to warm to that idea warm to the idea.
The man had placed his paper down on the table and was leaning towards him, staring. Edwin was pushed back into his seat he couldn’t move a muscle. Those piercing dark brown eyes burned through to his very soul, stripping him down layer by layer.
He couldn’t even blink, yet he knew that he had to break eye contact somehow before the man, damaged him permanently.
The man opened his mouth wide like a snake about to digest a meal. Edwin had no intention of being that meal, he caught sight of a couple of large black letters just beyond his periphery vision, it was enough to help him break free from his gaze. He looked straight at the man, this time no fear showed in Edwin’s eyes. He brought his fists up and slammed them on the table.
“Get the fuck away from me!” He shouted.
One of the businessmen snapped his head around, he didn’t look at snake mouth, it was Edwin who received the stare. The man soon found something else to occupy his attention when Edwin glared back at him.
When he turned back, snakemouth was no longer there, neither was the paper. Edwin rubbed his hand across his face, oh Jesus, he was losing it big time. Now he was seeing things and so much for keeping a low profile, he would have been less inconspicuous if he’d cartwheeled down the middle of the corridor, naked and painted blue.
That settled it; he was getting off at the next station. Edwin bent down and looped his hand through the handles of his precious bag just as the train entered a tunnel. The motion blurred green switched to stygian blackness. Edwin watched the fluorescent strip lights along the carriage start to glow but it wasn’t the same. Edwin wanted the sun. Instinct commanded him not to shut his eyes; he didn’t even blink, not after last time. He had no intention of being visited by yet another staring abomination.
He began to count; he got to ten, to fifty, to one hundred then began to sweat. Edwin blinked, he couldn’t help himself. He looked at the remaining passengers, the man who had stared at him hadn’t moved, he appeared to be asleep. Two seats in front of him sat a young man in a black suit with his head buried in a book and on his side at the end of the corridor was a red haired woman in her thirties clacking away on a laptop.
None of them seemed to be that bothered about the length of this tunnel but then again, why would they? Unlike him, they probably travelled this route at least once a day.
It had been over five minutes now, this wasn’t right. Edwin licked his lips and pulled himself out of the seat
“He coughed. “Excuse me? Does anyone know how long this tunnel is?”
The passengers turned their head as one and three pairs of eyes punched into him like rubber bullets. Edwin staggered back, his waving arms managed to snag a handrail and keep himself from hitting the ground. The bag flew out of his hand and slid along the walkway. The carriage light flickered and Edwin whimpered when the three silently rose and walked towards him. He turned and fled down the empty corridor.
He had no idea if they were still in pursuit nor did he turn to check. Edwin barged through the open doors at the end of the corridor and into the next carriage, this one was empty too.
The thought that he was alone on this train crawled into his head, it refused to move. He reached the next carriage and almost cried at the discovery that this was devoid of life too. He stopped and sneaked a quick glance behind him. Edwin was alone. He considered his options. What choice did he have? He had to go on, he needed to find someone else, someone normal.
He worked his way through the empty carriage then stopped before he reached the doors that led to the next one. There was a green box just above him, the emergency stop, despite knowing that if he deliberately stopped the train in the middle of a pitch back tunnel, he’s end up going into shock, he had to consider it. It was the only way he could think of bringing people to him.
He’d check just one carriage; Edwin took a couple of steps and peered through the window. He saw people! At fucking last, he was no longer alone.
He hurried into the carriage, waves of terror and dread just sloughing off him. One of them must know what was happening, they had to.
In his eagerness to reach them, Edwin stumbled over something left in the walkway. He glanced down then dropped to his knees in denial when he saw what it was.
Edwin unzipped the bag and thrust his hand in, shaking his head in disbelief when he pulled out a wad of bundled ten pound notes.
This was just impossible. How could he have gone full circle? He lifted his head, watching the woman with the laptop join the two mean. All three walked towards him, grinning.
Edwin hung his head, he gathered all the money together, placed the bundles in the holdall and zipped it shut.
Three pairs of shoes stopped in front of him, he didn’t look up, he then felt his coat being grabbed. Edwin was hoisted off the carpet, spun around and pushed back. The three that were now behind him caught Edwin and pushed him forward. He came face to face with the very tall man again only this time he was wearing a train conductor’s uniform.
The sickly stench of putrid meat blanketing the man forced Edwin to try to jerk back but he was incapacitated. Snake mouth blinked a couple of times before removing what looked like an old fashioned paper scroll from under his arm, he unrolled it.
Gavin Mitchell still had five months of life left to enjoy the wealth we gave him before we were due to collect what was promised to us.”
Edwin couldn’t read the writing on the paper, the letters were too small but he did notice a signature at the bottom signed in what looked like dark red ink.
“You, Edwin Calhoun denied us so we will have yours instead.”
He saw movement by his feet, he watched with horror as the zip on the holdall moved down revealing the severed head of the man he had murdered.
“Thank you,” it said to Edwin. “you saved me soul from eternal damnation.”
The conductor growled and brought his boot down on the smiling face. The head burst apart like a blood filled ball.
Edwin opened his mouth to scream just as the train exploded out of the tunnel. He was not greeted with the pleasant sight of green countryside. Crimson light filtered into the carriage, he caught a glance of endless jagged mountain ranges before his head was grabbed and was worked to look into the conductor’s cold, cruel eyes.
His hand grew and stiffened into talons.
“Your soul, Edwin Calhoun, now belongs to me.”
Foresight by Dave Jeffery
“I’ve seen things you’d never believe.”
Detective Ross stared at the disheveled figure sitting opposite. They were separated by an interview table and a fog of disbelief. Unseen colleagues watched the two way conversation from behind a one way mirror in the wall to his left.
“Well, we can all put a claim on that, Mr. Faulks,” Ross said.
Ray Faulks fumbled with a bulky wrist watch, twisting the winding mechanism as though attempting to turn back time.
Ross let silence roll out. It was his ally at such times, no pressure, giving Faulks time to stew, consider his next move.
“No one ever believes me,” Faulks muttered. “Why should you?”
“I’m paid by the hour,” Ross said. “That means my mind is always open.”
Faulks stopped playing with the watch on his wrist. He looked up, across the Formica expanse, and in those eyes Ross saw a man, haunted. Sullen sockets, smudged dark by lack of sleep, played host to bright blue irises dulled by fatigue.
“Then where shall I start?” Faulks said after a moment.
“Let’s go with cliché,” Ross replied. “Let’s start at …”
The beginning is a place of confusion. As always. A nether world of swirling images as the now fuses with the then. Faulks remembers climbing into the shower, his body taut with fatigue. He’d been dreaming again. But awareness had robbed him of clarity, his dreams scuttling for cover like rats in a torch beam. Yet whilst the details had become ghosts their essence remained.
He remembered looking down on a shivering landscape, the ground undulating as though fluid, waves of rock and tarmac washing against the skyscrapers that fought to stay upright in the onslaught. The dream lasted only seconds longer than the quake, but in that time the destruction was total.
And real.
The comic books called it pre-cognition. The scientists called it a myth. Para-psychology blamed primordial instincts long since redundant in the world of technology. Psychology blamed the subconscious fantasies of a disturbed mind in societal meltdown.
No matter how others chose to box it, Ray Faulk had it, owned it, lived it. For as long as he could remember, he’d seen things before they happened. At first the images had come as mere flashes, like ghostly shapes in a room lit by lightning. A boy holding hands with a tall man the day before little Timmy Weston was taken and found in a brook one week later, dead and defiled.
The terrible image of old man Clutterbuck, his body bent and broken as the Buick hit him on the corner of fifth, spinning him five times before his already shattered remains buckled on impact against the asphalt.
