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  The BIG Horror Pack 1

  SAM

  ASBO

  THE FINAL WINTER

  THE HOUSEMATES

  SEA SICK

  .

  SAM

  By Iain Rob Wright

  CHAPTER ONE

  “He’s a scam artist, nothing but a conman.”

  Tim Golding faced his accuser and sighed. The silver-haired gentleman was large and overbearing, but Tim wasn’t about to stand there and be insulted. “Sir, it was your wife who contacted me. If you’d like me to leave then I will. To be honest, I’d rather be at home watching The X Files.”

  “No, please,” said the man’s wife. “Help us.”

  Tim examined the woman and could see she was emotionally battered. After ten years in the business you could detect the bullshitters fairly easy, and this woman wasn’t spinning him a line. She was genuinely terrified. Either that or she was one hell of an actor. The charcoal bags beneath her eyes were proof enough of her sleepless nights.

  “Okay,” Tim said. “Why don’t we take a seat and you can tell me what’s been happening.”

  The woman’s face almost crumbled into sobs then, but she forced a weary, thin-lipped smile. She led Tim into the dining room where a set of leather-backed chairs lay tucked up against a polished oak table in the centre of a plush beige carpet.

  Tim slid out a chair and plonked himself down on it. The silver-haired husband pulled out a chair and sat down stiffly. He made no secret of his cynicism, huffing and puffing with every breath and rolling his eyes like marbles.

  Tim rolled his own eyes. Okay, asshole, I get it. You think I’m a charlatan and you’re a tough guy that won’t be scammed. If only you knew the truth, buddy…

  Tim clasped his slender hands together on the table and gave his most reassuring smile to the frightened wife. She’d taken the seat opposite Tim and was staring at him intently.

  He started with an obvious question. “When did this all start?”

  The lights in the room flickered.

  The woman let out a whimper, but the husband was quick to offer an explanation. “Dodgy wiring. Happens all the time.”

  Tim nodded and focused on the man’s wife. He waited for her to begin her story. When she did so, she spoke in a sickly, timid voice. “It started about a month ago,” she said, “when our dog, Buster, brought something home.”

  Tim glanced around the room. There was no evidence of a dog. No family pictures featuring a lovely pooch or pet bed in the corner. In fact the room was devoid of anything, aside from the table and chairs.

  “You have a dog?” he asked.

  The woman shook her head solemnly. “Not anymore.”

  “Stupid mutt got himself trapped in our fishpond,” the husband added.

  Tears welled up in the wife’s eyes, but she did her best to go on. “He was a little Jack Russell. We were always on at him to stay out of the pond but he would never listen. Must have dived in a dozen times, but he always managed to get back out okay. Then, a few weeks ago, I went into the garden and…and…and I found him dead at the bottom of the pond. His collar had caught on a tree root sticking through the pond’s lining. He couldn’t get his head back above the water. He must have really suffered.” The wife started crying. Tim handed her a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his scuffed leather jacket.

  “Oh, nice,” said the husband. “Is that one of your props?”

  Tim ignored him. “So tell me,” he asked the wife. “What was it you said your dog brought home the week before that?”

  “A bone.”

  Tim raised one of his coppery eyebrows. “Was it human?”

  “Of course not,” the husband answered. “Don’t you think we would have reported something like that to the police?”

  “You could have, for all I know. Until your wife called me, I didn’t know a thing about you.”

  The husband scoffed. “Yeah, I’ll bet.”

  “It was a chicken bone, I think,” said the wife. “It was small and sharp. I didn’t think anything about it at the time, but then everything started happening.”

  Tim mulled it over. If it had been a human bone then it may have summoned a poltergeist…but not a chicken bone. Tim rubbed at the stubble on his chin. Never heard of a malevolent chicken spirit before – at least not in this country. Chicken bones were often used in Voodoo rituals, but Tim had never seen any evidence of it this side of the Atlantic. “So what was the first…occurrence?” he asked.

  The wife took a breath and shuddered. “It was during the night while we were sleeping. It was about 3AM. I opened my eyes, wide awake.”

  “What woke you?”

  “The light in the bedroom was on. My husband was still fast asleep, snoring. I’ve never known him to turn the light on during the night so I assumed it must have been left on by accident. I got up to turn it off, but I realised that the hallway light was also on. We always turn off the lights before going to bed, so it was strange. I walked through the house and found that every single light had been switched on – even the lamps.”

  “Like I said,” the husband chimed in. “Dodgy wiring.”

  Tim nodded, but was getting tired of the man’s abrupt cynicism. An educated guess suggested he was ex-military, used to being in control. Tim didn’t have a great deal of respect for the man’s attitude. “Did anything else unusual happen that night?”

  The wife shook her head. “I didn’t sleep another wink that night, but it wasn’t until the next day that I really knew something was wrong.”

  “Go on,” said Tim.

  The wife glanced around nervously. “Well, the whole house is like the Arctic Circle for a start. I can see my breath. You can feel how cold it is, right?”

  Tim nodded. It was indeed chilly.

  “I turn the heat all the way up, but it never seems to do any good. One night I was absolutely freezing, so I…I decided to take a bath to try to warm up, but, when I-I….” A short sob escaped her lips. “Sorry, just give me a second.”

  “Daft mare thinks she saw blood coming out the taps,” said the husband, shaking his head and tutting.

  Tim took a deep breath and made some mental notes. Then he addressed the husband, making sure to look directly at his steely blue eyes. “Did you see this yourself, sir?”

  “Did I hell. There was nothing but a bath full of water when I got there. Told her it was probably just rust from the pipes. This is an old house.”

  Tim nodded, but disagreed. The house didn’t look more than twenty years old. Still, it wouldn’t help to argue. People in need wanted allies not conflict. “An old house with both dodgy wiring and plumbing, it would seem. So how long after that did the dog die?”

  “A few days,” the wife answered, weeping without constraint. “There were some other weird things that happened up until then, but nothing like this. We buried Buster in the garden. That night I was woken up again. All the lights were on just like before, but this time there were noises, too. It was Buster barking in the garden. I know it sounds crazy, but I swear it was him. I know his bark and it was definitely him. I ran into the garden in my nightie. I was so excited, but when I got there he was…hanging.”

  Tim leant forward over the table and paid close attention. “Hanging?”

  The wife nodded. A tear dripped from the tip of her nose. “From the top of the old fern tree behind the pond,” she said. “He was hanging by his collar.”

  “Sick bloody kids,” the husband spa
t.

  Tim wasn’t convinced. “This is a pretty nice neighbourhood, isn’t it? Do you usually have a problem with youth crime in this area?”

  The husband shrugged his shoulders. “There are no nice neighbourhoods anymore. You get troublemaking kids everywhere. Police don’t do a thing.”

  “Okay,” said Tim, avoiding a political debate. “I think I should take a look around. There’s a good chance this is all someone’s idea of a sick joke, but I won’t know more until I conduct some experiments, starting with this room.”

  “Here we go,” said the husband. “The theatrics are about to begin.”

  Tim once again ignored him. He took off his trainers and climbed up onto the dinner table. Once his footing was stable, he pulled a small leather pouch from the back pocket of his jeans.

  “What’s that?” the husband asked. “One of your new-age gizmos?”

  “No,” Tim explained. “It’s a set of screwdrivers. I’m going to take a look at your ‘dodgy’ wiring.”

  The light fixture had been replaced with a modern studio light that coiled around an aluminium rail in a semi-circle. It was easy to unfasten. Tim loosened the fixture until it was hanging by its wiring, then poked a finger inside.

  “Be careful,” said the wife. “The electricity is still on.”

  Tim tapped the green and yellow switch-wire and the lights flickered on and off. He prodded it a few more times and the lights flickered in kind. He reattached the fixture and hopped down off the table. He turned to the husband and smiled. “You have a loose switch wire. I would suggest hiring an electrician.”

  The silver-haired man seemed confused, as if expecting some fanciful explanation which would result in Tim charging him money. But that wasn’t the type of game Tim was playing. There is a bigger intrigue afoot.

  The next thing Tim did was reach into his back pocket again and pull out a spool of cotton thread. He unravelled a length of about ten centimetres and held it in the air. The thread rose sharply to the north side of the room, which meant a breeze was coming from the south. Thar she blows.

  Tim knelt down beside the room’s skirting board, holding out his fingertips to feel for air currents. It didn’t take him long to spot a hairline crack running half-a-foot along the base of the wall where it met the floor. Cold air flowed in from outside.

  Tim stood up and turned around. “You have a crack in the masonry. This time of year it’s letting in an icy draft. A good plasterer will sort that out for you.” He clapped his hands together in punctuation. “Right, shall we go take a look at that bathtub now?”

  The husband and wife seemed dumbfounded. They led Tim upstairs without a word and showed him to the second door on the right of the hallway. The light was already on inside and crept out beneath the doorway.

  “Is this the bathroom?” Tim asked.

  They both nodded to him silently.

  Tim grasped the doorknob and turned it. He slid inside the room and looked around. The bathroom was nicely appointed: stone-tiles with an art-deco suite. If anything, the room was a little bit too sterile for Tim’s taste. It was like a showroom at a DIY centre. It lacked the soapy odours and stray hairs of a well-used washroom.

  Tim pointed to an L-shaped bathtub at the far end of the room. “This is where you say the tap ran with blood?”

  “Yes,” said the woman. “It was coming right out of the hot tap.”

  Tim leant over the tub and placed his hand on the tap that was marked with a calligraphic H. He turned it clockwise and water immediately appeared in a steady torrent. There was nothing unordinary about it. “All looks pretty fine to-”

  Suddenly the plumbing began to clunk and rattle. Tim looked closely at the hot tap and saw that it was vibrating. A viscous stream of brown-red liquid erupted and began to fill the tub.

  “There,” said the wife. “Just like that. It’s blood!”

  Tim placed his palm beneath the thick stream. The mysterious substance was mixing with the hot water from the tank and coming out like arm syrup. Tim pulled back his hand before it started to burn and raised it to his face. He sniffed the substance, then licked it.

  The husband grimaced. “My God, man. What are you doing?”

  Tim rolled his eyes. “It’s not blood. Tell you the truth, I don’t know what it is, but it’s not blood and it’s not rust. Tastes kind of sweet.”

  “So what do you suggest?” asked the wife.

  “A plumber,” said Tim, washing his hand in the nearby basin. “Let me see where you found the dog.”

  The garden was at the back of the house, lit by a pair of floodlights attached to the brickwork. The pond was set back about fifteen feet from the house amongst some flowerbeds. Tim would have expected to see koi or goldfish beneath the surface of the water, but the pond was empty.

  The fern tree, from which the Jack Russell had allegedly hanged, was standing just beyond the pond. The woman pointed at it. “Buster was hanging from the top of that tree by his neck. It was so horrible. Probably the worst thing I’ve-”

  Tim cut the woman off. “Where did you bury him?”

  “What?”

  Tim looked around the garden. The lawn was short and well kept. “You said you buried Buster in the garden. Could you show me?”

  “You leave that dog be,” said the husband. “My wife is upset enough.”

  “I don’t want to dig the dog up, sir. I just want to know where you buried him.”

  The husband and wife stared at each other. It was as though they were trying to communicate without saying any words. “I-I can’t remember where I buried him,” the husband eventually answered.

  Tim huffed. “Really? Is that what you’re going with?”

  “Look here,” said the husband.

  “No, you look. What are you both up to? Why did you hire me? Are you looking to discredit me? Are you writing a book?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” cried the wife. “Why are you being like this?”

  Tim laughed. “And you, my dear, you almost had me fooled. Bravo.” Tim clapped his hands sarcastically. “This is all very well done indeed. The loose wiring to make the lights flicker; the broken skirting board; the food colouring in the water tank – all good stuff. What really gave you away though was the dog. This lawn is perfect. There’s been no digging or burying in this garden at all. The whole thing is a setup. I don’t even think this is your house. There’s not a single photo of the two of you or even any toiletries in the bathroom. Your acting was good, granted, but I think you failed to truly become your characters – plus the age difference between you two is a little hard to buy into. Now, perhaps you’d like to tell me why the hell you brought me here.”

  The husband nodded his head and a carnivorous smirk crept across his lips. It was almost as if a veil dropped from his face, revealing the menacing, silver-haired imposter beneath. Tim was suddenly very worried. His Sherlock-Holmes scene of deduction had been satisfying, certainly, but now he was alone with two people who had brought him here under false pretences. He was yet to find out exactly what those pretences were.

  The husband pulled a flashy mobile phone from his pocket and dialled. He placed the handset to his ear, still smirking, like a lion about to make a kill. After a few seconds, he spoke into the receiver. “Guy passed the test. What do you want me to do with him?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Angela Murs stared into the bottom of her whisky glass and felt her head spin. At forty-years of age, she was beginning to wonder if the time had come to spend her evenings some place other than the grimy student hangouts of the city.

  Wolverhampton was a University town and the bars were packed most every night. It was easy to disappear inside them, easy to be alone amongst strangers. The bars were also student-prices-cheap and crammed full of young eye candy. In fact, there was a slender young thing currently propping up the bar right now. The brunette’s legs went on forever, beginning at a pair of perfectly manicured feet in open heels and carrying o
n all the way up to her tight little ass. There was a tattoo of a rose on her left ankle that got Angela’s juices flowing.

  The young girl was unlikely to be gay, but that didn’t mean Angela couldn’t appreciate the view. Most of the senior students knew Angela well and would often direct any newly experimenting young girls her way. As it turned out, Angela got more than her fair share of dalliances for a forty-year old woman. Not bad for an ex-priest.

  Angela hadn’t left the clergy because of her sexuality (although it had perhaps made it inevitable). It had more to do with the church itself. Her years at the pulpit had shown her that the Church was an institution run by slimy hypocrites and greedy bureaucrats. The religious leaders couldn’t even decide on what to believe themselves, let alone what everyone else should. Some priests supported homosexuality (or were even gay themselves) while others derided it. Some vicars were kind, decent souls, while others were judgemental cunts. The more time that passed, the less Angela believed her colleagues and fellow priests were on the path God truly wanted. So she had decided to leave, three years ago now, to follow the Lord in her own way. Things hadn’t turned out quite as planned.

  Somehow, Angela devolved into the exact kind of hypocrite she detested. Even if God did condone homosexuality, Angela knew that he would not support her drunken, debauched ways. She wore Sin around her shoulders like a comfortable cloak and felt cold without it.

  The slender brunette noticed Angela was staring. She smiled politely, but awkwardness tainted her thin red lips. She was no doubt wondering why a woman twice her age was eyeing her up.

  “You from the University?” Angela asked, trying to sound breezy and aloof.

  The girl nodded. “I’m studying Creative Writing.”

  “Oh, great. You plan on being a writer?”

  “I guess.”

  “Go for it. Nice way to make a living. So you made many friends yet?”

  The girl’s awkwardness grew and her bare shoulders began to shift uncomfortably. “Yes, a few. I should probably get back to them.”