Preternatural: Carter Bailey Book 1 Page 4

“No. That’s all right.” I gestured up the road. “Can’t be too far off, now.”

  “Still a good distance off. But if you’d rather walk, well, so be it. There’s no law against it.” The officer sniffed again. Earlier I thought the sniffing was all part of the package, all part of the condescending copper act. Now I could see a bead of mucus trembling on the tip of his nose and realised he was suffering a cold. I think he caught me looking, because, next second, he batted at the end of his nose with a thick wrist. Sniffed again. “Just be sure to stay on the roads. I don’t want to be traipsing over the glen half the night if you get yourself lost.”

  I flicked a finger alongside my head, a salute of sorts. “Stay on the roads. Yes, sir.”

  He gave me a smile full of teeth, but no humour. “Good night…sir.”

  “Good night, officer.” I leaned down, saluted again. “Sergeant.”

  Her smile was pinched. Not one for wasting her valuable time with obviously crazy Sassenachs. All down to an impression formed from what she’d read off the computer screen, no doubt. I walked away. They idled in place and I guessed they were watching my progress in their mirrors. Maybe they expected me to start making chicken noises and bobbing my head or perhaps throwing my arms skyward and praising the Lord or something. It was probably disappointing when I simply carried on my way, looking as sane as could be whilst walking in the middle of a storm with very little protection from the elements. After a further ten seconds-or-so I heard the growl of the engine as the police car continued on towards Skelvoe harbour. I guessed a pot of tea was calling them.

  After that I found it difficult to clear my head. The confrontation with the officers had undone in minutes what my walk had tried so hard to erase. I was back to square one, and I walked on with agitated strides. Maybe if they’d hung around a little longer I’d have confirmed what they’d read on their computer; that I’d spent time in a psychiatric hospital fighting the spectres of my horrific past, and was still suffering the schizophrenic delusions associated with some forms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

  FIVE

  Four years ago…

  “Mr Bailey? Mr Bailey! Karen’s on the phone for you.”

  I looked up from the stack of reports I’d been busy with the past five hours, a stack that - like some magical replenishing pot - didn’t diminish, regardless of how many I shoved into my out tray. I was almost done for the day, physically, mentally, but not exactly productively. Unfortunately, the bills outweighed the orders, which wasn’t very comforting this close to Christmas.

  I stared somewhat cross-eyed at my assistant, Rebecca Woods. She stood in the open doorway of my office, head lowered, mouth gaping around a wad of chewing gum as she waited for my acknowledgement. I blinked. Rebecca cocked her head.

  “Sorry, Rebecca. What did you say?”

  “Karen’s on the phone,” she repeated, enunciating clearly. “She says she can’t get you on your mobile.”

  Raking through the contents on my desk, I found my mobile phone beneath a bulging catalogue I’d first perused hours earlier. Vaguely, I recalled turning off the ring tone to avoid unnecessary distractions. I saw that I had four missed calls, all of them from my home number.

  “Oh, shit,” I whispered.

  “She sounds pissed off,” Rebecca said. “I thought I’d check with you before I put her through. Y’know, just in case, like?”

  I made a face. I considered returning the call on my mobile. Rebecca noted my dilemma. “I’ll put it through, okay? Cheaper using the work’s phone than your personal mobile.”

  “A little bit of leakage there, Rebecca?” It explained why the company telecommunications bill had jumped exponentially in the three months since Rebecca had joined the firm. But I nodded anyway. Didn’t make much of a difference to my pocket either way; I’d be paying the bill for my home phone, my mobile, or the office phone, whichever way we did it.

  Rebecca stepped into the outer office, clumping like Herman Munster in her huge wedge-heeled shoes. The shoes were hideous, the latest attempt of the fashion industry to bring back the Glam Rock of the Seventies. Rebecca was a sucker for fads. But she was a pleasant enough kid as far as sulky teenagers with more metal piercings than sense goes. Her youth, and her eye for the latest trends, were actually a great help when choosing what stock to carry. Plus, she was a half-decent receptionist, usually with my best interests in mind.

  In the next couple of seconds I sucked air into my lungs, building my fortitude. Karen wasn’t going to be pleased that I’d ignored her calls. She wouldn’t believe that the silent phone was an oversight on my part. Trust wasn’t one of Karen’s strongest points these days. Not good in a relationship destined for marriage not more than three months hence.

  She came on the phone, and immediately I picked up on her tension. “Carter? Where have you been?”

  “I’ve been here at work,” I answered. “Where do you think I’ve-”

  I was cut off.

  “You’ll have to come home.”

  “I can’t, Karen I’ve still got a mountain of-”

  “You have to come home, Carter. Please…come now.”

  I didn’t argue. That wasn’t mistrust or jealousy or anger in her tone. It was desperation.

  “Karen? What’s wrong?” Subconscious volition threw me to my feet. I stood hunched over the phone, nerves doing somersaults in my guts. “Are you ill? Is it…wait, I’ll get a doctor.”

  Karen sobbed. “Just come home, Carter. Please. Come home now.”

  “Where’s Cash?” I asked. “Tell him to come to the phone.”

  “He won’t. He said I had to call.”

  “What? Karen, put him on.”

  “Please, Carter…” Her voice faded, replaced by the dial tone.

  I looked at the handset, mystified. I quickly stabbed out my home number and got the engaged line tone. I thought that perhaps Karen was trying to ring back. I quickly hung up. Waited. Nothing. Pressed redial. Again I got the engaged tone. I hung up with more force than intended, almost catapulting the phone and my out tray off my desk. I had to grab at the tottering tray to avoid upsetting all my hard work.

  “Rebecca,” I shouted, realising that this was an extension phone.

  From the other office Rebecca said, “What?”

  “Have you got Karen on that phone?”

  “I put her through to you.”

  “I don’t mean before…” We were getting nowhere. “Never mind.”

  I tried again but my home line was still engaged. “Fuck!”

  There was movement in the doorway. Rebecca watching me. She was chewing a piercing in her bottom lip, her teeth clicking on metal. She flinched as I lunged towards her.

  “I gotta go,” I said.

  “What’s wrong, Mr Bailey?”

  “I don’t know. Something. I don’t know.”

  “Is everything okay with Karen? With…you want me to-”

  But I was already shoving past her. “Tell James I’ve had to go home. Family emergency.”

  James Pender was my business partner. As an ex-international tennis champion he was the poster boy for our sports clothing line. He was only encamped in the office next to mine. I didn’t have time to stop and explain myself. Well-meaning people took up way too much precious time during any emergency.

  Just as Rebecca was doing now.

  “Mr Bailey! Your jacket.” She stepped into my office, unhooked my jacket from behind the door, swung it after me. I didn’t stop. My jacket was surplus to requirement regardless of the snow outside.

  I was jogging by the time I reached the stairs down to the lobby, but as I hit the street I was running full-tilt for the car park adjacent to the office block housing Rezpect Sports. Beneath the feet of passing pedestrians the snow had turned to brown slush. It splattered my suit trousers as I ran, but my dry cleaning bill was the last thing on my mind. The snow didn’t aid stability. Twice I almost went on my backside before I reached my car. Then, wheels biting for traction on
the slick road, I spun out into the traffic. Someone blew their horn at me.

  The next five miles were a blur as I negotiated the late afternoon traffic. Luckily it was Friday. Rush hour was always early on a Friday as commuters made an early dash for home, so the roads weren’t as congested as normal. I still had a couple of near misses, and this time it was me honking my horn at the inconsiderate bastards who wouldn’t get out my way. Couldn’t they recognise my urgency, my desperate need to get home?

  Finally, I hit the dual carriageway and the way was a little easier. The snow had intensified, and the wipers beat a rhythm with my heart as they battled to keep the windscreen clear. I cranked up the heating, hoping it would help, but that only served to make me queasy. In the end I knocked the blowers off and dropped my window instead. The rush of the icy wind was a welcome relief, and I could ignore the flakes of snow that whirled in my immediate field of vision.

  As I drove I hit the speed dial on my mobile, flagrantly disregarding the law as I held it to my ear and again heard the broken tone of an engaged line.

  “Shit, shit, shit…” Not the most comforting of mantras, but it was all that came to mind. I feared the worst. I considered dialling the emergency services and getting the paramedics to my address A.S.A.P.

  Karen wasn’t a vicious dominatrix, or a self-centred or spoiled bitch. She was the woman I loved dearly, the person I would die for. Normally she was a sweet, caring and supportive person. It was only over the past four weeks or so that she’d changed. But that was to be expected, wasn’t it? Karen’s moods, her recent mistrust and jealousy, all had a single catalyst. They began the day after she realised that she was four months pregnant with our child - one of those hormonal things that men simply do not have the slightest clue about. Me included. And, like most men, I could only bite down on my frustration and ride out this period of living at the crest of a hormonal tide until things settled back to normal. Apparently it could be some time. But it wasn’t a bad deal; she took the pain, the swollen ankles, the aching back, I took the brunt of her mood swings.

  Karen had good excuse for her behaviour.

  And that’s where my fear lay. The pregnancy. There could only be one reason why Karen had summoned me so desperately. Something was wrong with our baby. Karen’s pleading, the unanswered phone, screamed it at me. Something was wrong with our baby.

  I drove on autopilot, a strange sense of distraction replacing my previous frantic need to get home. It was a cold-edged sensation named dread, hating what I might discover when I arrived home. Somehow the journey passed so much quicker. I was pulling into our drive before I was even aware of having arrived in the village. Then I was at the front door of our house with no memory of leaving the car.

  One thing I did notice. Well, two things, actually. There was no ambulance at the scene, and Karen’s Citroen Picasso was parked under the lean-to adjacent to the house. But that didn’t mean Karen was still at home. An ambulance could have been and gone. Except that a glance at the virgin snow - marred only by my tyre tracks - pretty much negated that. I had a flash vision of Karen collapsed in the kitchen, lying beneath, but out of reach of the phone, while blood darkened her trousers.

  I blinked the vision away. Denial was the only weapon against my darkest fear. I charged at the front door, grabbing at the handle. The door resisted me. I stepped back, twisting at the handle again. And it still refused to open.

  “Karen?” I set off around the side of the house. Shouted her name again. I squeezed sideways between her car and the wall, making for the side entrance. I saw my brother’s Harley Davidson parked to the rear of the Citroen. Something registered. Why hadn’t Cash called an ambulance? In all probability he was in the house. He’d been staying with us for the past fortnight, since his abrupt arrival at our door following a sudden cancellation of his six-year sojourn around Europe and Asia Minor. He gave no explanation for ending his travels, merely stating that he’d done everything and seen everything he wanted to. Since then he’d been camped in our spare room - the room designated for our child. He’d ate my food, drank my beer, left his dirty washing for Karen to launder. He’d done little else in the meantime. What on earth was he good for if he couldn’t even pick up the telephone? Couldn’t he repay our hospitality with that one kindness?

  The side door was locked. I grabbed at the keys in my pocket, even as I banged on the door. “Karen? Karen! Where are you?”

  My keys were in the ignition in my car. It didn’t stop me fumbling again at my pockets, or pushing out through the small door that led out to our back garden. The snow seemed to be responding to my urgency, seemingly falling with more intent at clouding my senses against what I might find. I’d made my mind up: our baby was dying; Karen was dying. And my useless little brother was too drunk or too stoned to care.

  Across the rear yard I could see the ghost of the watermill that sat astride the river. A relic of days gone by, to some a huge white elephant, but it was a buying point when I’d viewed the house. Call me an old romantic: it appeared mystical, magical, with the sunlight dappling the droplets of water pouring off the wheel as it turned with the sluggish flow of the river. I couldn’t resist.

  Now, through the snow, the mill looked like a misshapen ogre, way too heavy across the shoulders to remain upright for long. To my surprise, a single set of tracks dug their way through the snow towards the mill.

  I did one of those cartoon double takes. Did I head for the mill or house? The tracks were too large to be Karen’s. They had to be my brother’s boot prints. I felt a pang of regret at judging him harshly. I’d thrown blame at him, when, judging by the tracks in the snow, he wasn’t even home to offer assistance. But the pang was only momentary. I recalled our words from earlier…

  “Where’s Cash? Tell him to come to the phone.”

  “He won’t. He said I had to call.”

  “What? Karen, put him on.”

  “Please, Carter…”

  …His tracks were fresh. Minutes old at most. What the hell was he doing gallivanting out by the mill in this blizzard when Karen was in dire need of help? It was typical behavior of the scrounging bastard!

  My mind made up, I ran towards the conservatory. The door was closed against the weather, but to my relief it gave under my hand. I charged into the conservatory, through the adjoining doors and into the living room. The leather couch was out of sync, like it had been shoved aside. I saw scuff marks on the floor. I wondered if Karen had first fallen there. But that wasn’t all.

  A smell registered in my subconscious mind. It was barely an undertone. Salty. Familiar, yet out of place. There was a stirring of the short hairs on the back of my neck. I should have taken more notice. My urgency made me disregard that which I knew had taken place here and I continued on into the house, shouting for my fiancée. I checked the kitchen next. The handset of the phone dangled on its cable. I could hear the meep! meep! meep! of the engaged tone. I slammed the phone back into its cradle, lifted it again and then hit redial.

  999.

  A woman’s voice: “Emergency. Which service please?”

  Again I slammed the phone down and ran for the stairs.

  “Karen? Karen? Where are you?” My voice came out high-pitched. I hit the landing without taking a breath, lunging for the master bedroom. It was empty, the bed made, nothing out of place. I turned back, went to the next room, finding it empty. On to the bathroom. Empty. Then to my brother’s room. The room we’d earmarked for our baby’s nursery. A room no baby should ever be raised in again.

  He’d made the room a nightmare.

  I took in the details in an instant. And in the next my mind closed down against the horror. But that was before I could block the weird, hallucinogenic symbols he’d spray-painted on the walls and mirrors. There were other paintings, mostly of large penises forcing into open vaginas, raw and dripping. There were photographs of what I took to be his erect penis. There were also photographs of women. He’d pinned them to the walls above his bed
. The women encompassed many types - Caucasian, Black, Asian, some of Eastern European descent. Many races, creeds, colours. In each of the women I saw the single factor that made them a collective group. Each and every one of them was pregnant. Or had been, before their innards had been spilled in a brutal form of Caesarean section and their wombs laid open to display the developing fetus within.

  “Karen?” Her name was torn from my throat.

  I descended the stairs in panic. My feet left me about three paces behind, and I ended up negotiating the last few stairs in a bumping slide on my backside that ended with me grasping at the walls to avoid slamming my head on the steps. Then I was running for the kitchen again. The phone.

  Gasping, I hit redial. Not waiting for the emergency call handler this time, I bleated out my address, asked them to hurry and threw the handset away as I hurtled back through the disarrayed living room. The smell was still there, and I knew it for what it was. Semen. Man stink!

  The odour of sex. Forced sex? Rape!

  Jesus Christ! What had happened here?

  I ran through the conservatory into the yard, my hearing deadened by the hush that accompanies snowfall. I screamed for Karen, but it sounded like my voice came from a distant place. I screamed again. Saw the remnants of the tracks in the snow. They were fainter now, the snow backfilling them as I stood there.

  “Cash! You bastard! What have you done?”

  In my shirtsleeves I ran through the blizzard, insensible to the cold or to what I intended doing. The mill rose out of the white curtain like a giant’s castle in a dark fantasy. The creak of the slowly turning wheel sounded like a witch’s laughter. Beckoning me forward.

  Built of steel girders and timber when such constructions were the life’s blood of the countryside, the mill had fallen into some decline. Boards in need of treatment were the mottled colour of fungus, and the mill itself stood like a lopsided mushroom, silhouetted against the trees crowding the riverbank. A central workshop area, wherein were housed the massive cogs and workings of the mill, was topped by a roofed platform, from which hung the block and tackle, and a rudimentary crane that once loaded the product of the mill onto boats and barges. From my approach I couldn’t see the wheel that turned the machinery, or the river with its sluggish black water, because of the bushes that had claimed the area around it. I could see a single light in a window on the platform thirty feet above me. It wasn’t the steady light from a bulb; it flickered.