The Butcher's Husband and Other Stories Read online

  Or rather, the remains of a body. She stared in horror at the sight of a human figure flat on its back, with the arms and legs on its right side completely torn away. The figure was pressed against the wall, and as she stared Lucy realized she could just about see part of a face with a single eye wide open and staring straight up. The body was so mangled and so bloodied, it took a few more seconds before Lucy began to realize that she recognized the face.

  Her lips trembled, but at first she couldn't quite get the name out.

  “Brad?” she stammered finally, still convinced that somehow there had to be a simple explanation.

  Whereas earlier her mind had been racing to imagine the worst, now she was desperately trying to convince herself that somehow this whole situation was a big misunderstanding.

  “Brad, please, no,” she whimpered, with tears in her eyes, as she began to crawl closer. “Brad...”

  She reached out to touch him, but at the last moment she held back. Now that she could see him more clearly, it was clear that he was dead. One entire side of his body appeared to have been mashed away, leaving thick, glistening patches of blood on the wall.

  As she pulled back, Lucy began to lower the phone, until its glow faded from Brad's body and he could barely be seen.

  And then, suddenly, she heard a faint noise nearby.

  She spun around and stared into the darkness, and now she realized she could hear a series of brief, irregular clicking sounds.

  She turned her head slightly, trying to work out what she was hearing. She began to raise her phone, but something held her back. Whatever was causing the clicking sound, she was starting to worry that it was something to do with her sister.

  “Melissa?” she said cautiously, her voice still trembling with fear. “Are you... Are you there?”

  She waited, staring into the darkness, and the clicking sound seemed to be edging closer and closer.

  “Melissa?”

  She waited again, and now the clicking sound seemed to be almost right in front of her. She adjusted her grip on the phone, but she didn't dare raise the flashlight.

  Not yet.

  “Melissa?” she said again, with tears still running down her face. “Melissa, please. Melissa...”

  The clicking continued.

  Getting closer.

  Ever closer...

  Slowly, despite the fear in her chest, Lucy began to raise her phone. As she did so, she began to see that there was a figure just a few feet away, crawling toward her through the darkness. Still fighting the urge to look away, she tilted the phone up further, and finally she screamed as she saw her sister's face.

  Melissa's eyes were wide open, filled with blood. The lower half of her face had been destroyed, leaving only a part of her jawbone, which was wagging wildly and clicking at its broken points as Melissa tried in vain to cry out.

  Lucy opened her mouth to scream, but for a moment she froze. Not just her body, either; her mind was also frozen, and she could only stare in horror as Melissa's jaw continued to wag. There was just a single stretch of muscle attached to the section of bone, but it was enough to let Melissa try again and again to scream. Still, the only sound that came out was that same desperate, hopeless series of bony clicks.

  And then, suddenly, something loomed high and huge in the darkness behind her.

  Before Lucy could reach, Melissa was slammed out of the way and sent crunching against the wall. Lucy stared at the vast object that now rushed toward her, and before she too was shoved aside she had time to recognize was she was seeing. She was unable to process that information, however, and a fraction of a second later she too was slammed into the wall by a huge, glistening tongue.

  Gasping as she felt bones breaking in her right shoulder and arm, Lucy slumped against the ground but immediately tried to pull herself up. Her mind was a racing jumble of impossible thoughts, but all she could think was that she had to get out of the house as fast as possible, and that she had to take Melissa with her.

  She turned to look for her sister, but at that moment she saw that the huge tongue had scooped Melissa up and was scraping her against the wall, pressing her body against the cold stones and grinding away chunks of flesh and bone.

  As the tongue slowly pushed Melissa higher, its vast, glistening pink underside was exposed, revealing large dribbles of saliva that began running down onto the floor.

  “No!” Lucy screamed, stumbling to her feet and rushing forward, only to slip on the saliva and fall back down onto her knees.

  She stared in horror as the tongue pushed Melissa's body all the way to the roof, and then she watched helplessly as the tongue pulled back and let Melissa fall back down to the floor.

  “No!” Lucy shouted again, crawling on all fours to her sister. As she got closer, however, she could see that she was already too late.

  Melissa's head had been entirely scrubbed away, leaving only the partial remains of her neck. Lucy stared for a moment, before hearing a monstrous slurping sound and turning to see that the tongue was now rising up to let blood dribble down toward its base.

  The tongue itself was easily forty feet long, and it emerged from the darkened far end of the room. A hideous groaning sound was starting to ring out, and the rotten stench was getting stronger and stronger. Mesmerized by the disgusting sight, and not daring to turn back and look at her sister, Lucy could only watch as the tongue's tip bumped against the ceiling, and a few seconds later she saw stray dribbles of blood running over the sides and splattering down onto the floor.

  Suddenly, as if desperate to not waste a drop, the tongue rushed down and began to lick the blood away, drawing it all back down towards its gullet.

  Lucy pulled back just in time, just before the tongue caught her feet. As she moved, however, she found that huge puddles of saliva were starting to stick to her hands and knees, and when she looked down she saw that there were particles of flesh and bone mixed into the saliva, along with strands of hair.

  “This isn't happening,” she told herself through gritted teeth, convinced that somehow she had to be imagining things. Her voice was trembling with fear, but she was trying desperately hard to stay calm. “It can't be happening. Something like this is impossible. You're still up in the house. Everyone's fine. Melissa spiked your soda, that's all. Yeah, that has to be it. Melissa spiked your drink and now you're hallucinating. She's really gone too far this time. I'm going to kill her when she...”

  Her voice trailed off as her gaze shifted over toward her sister's corpse. Or what remained of the corpse. For a moment, she could only stare at the bloodied stump where there had once been a head, and at the torn chest that had been ripped open.

  “I'll kill you when I wake up,” Lucy stammered, with tears streaming down her face. “I swear, when I wake up from whatever fevered dream this is, I will -”

  Before she could finish, the tongue slammed into her from behind, lifting her up and then starting to scrape her face-first against the wall. She screamed, but the scream was cut off as blood rushed up from the back of her throat and filled her mouth. And as she struggled, Lucy felt the tongue grinding her against the wall. She even thought she could feel her face and her chest being pulverized, and she definitely felt hot blood gushing from her wounds and running down her front, even as she was lifted ever higher and her head – or what was left of her head – finally bumped against the ceiling.

  I'll kill you when I wake up, she thought again, and these were her final thoughts before her skull shattered and her brain began to get scraped against the wall. The pain was so intense now, it had consumed her entirely. I swear, Melissa, when I wake up from this nightmare I'll be so furious with you!

  X

  “Lousy stinking jackass!” Walter muttered as he kept his hands on the steering wheel, thundering along the road in his newly fixed truck. “We'll see how he gets on once I'm out of town. We'll see what that rich idiot can do when he has to deal with everything alone!”

  Morning sunlight was str
eaming across the land, casting long shadows. Ahead, a few of the Pelham Estate houses could be seen silhouetted against the horizon. Walter glanced toward them and felt nothing but bitterness as he thought of how his family had been treated over the generations. This wasn't a new feeling, of course. His anger had been building for years, but finally it had exploded and he knew there was no going back.

  Lord Pelham could deal with things himself from now on.

  And then, spotting something amiss, Walter slowed his truck as he passed one of the houses, and then he brought the vehicle to a stop and squinted as he peered out the window.

  A van had been left parked next to one of the houses.

  “What the...”

  For a moment, Walter could only sit and stare. Then, out of nowhere, he remembered the van that had driven him off the road during the previous night. At the time, he'd simply assumed that a bunch of dumb kids had sped past on their way to some distant party. He'd kept an eye on the alarms, and none of them had indicated that anyone had entered the house. Now, reaching into his pocket, he checked his phone again.

  Still no alarms.

  “Damn it,” he muttered, clambering out of the truck and hurrying toward the house, before stopping as he realized the enormity of the situation.

  His alarms had failed.

  Some kids had entered the house.

  “They'd better not have made it into the feeding area,” he snarled under his breath, as he made his way over to the steps. “If they got all the way down there, then there's no helping them!”

  ***

  A couple of hours later, sitting at the top of the steps, Walter waited for someone to answer his call. Finally, after several attempts, he heard a clicking sound and then a groan.

  “What do you want?” Lord Pelham grumbled, sounding hungover and exhausted.

  “I wanted to talk to you about last night,” Walter said, still trying to find the right words. “I might have been a little hasty.”

  “Hasty?” There was a pause. “What are you talking about, man?”

  “Come on, don't make me beg,” Walter continued. “We both said things we didn't mean.”

  He waited, but all he could hear was Lord Pelham sniffing on the other end of the line. And then, as he was about to continue speaking, he suddenly realized what must have happened.

  “You don't remember last night at all, do you?” he whispered.

  “Of course I remember!” Lord Pelham snapped angrily. “I went out and had a few drinks. And if I happened to run into you, then there's really no need to get hung up on anything.”

  Walter hesitated, and then he allowed himself a faint smile. His Lordship might not want to admit it, but he quite clearly had no recollection whatsoever of the previous night.

  “Never mind,” he said with a sigh. “I'm sorry to have disturbed you.”

  “What's all this about?” Lord Pelham asked, sounding a little worried. “Nothing's wrong, is it? Out at the houses, I mean.”

  Walter swallowed hard as he glanced over toward the abandoned van. For a moment, his mind's eye was filled with the horrific images he'd seen when he'd opened one of the feeding panels and looked down into the main chamber. There had been so much smeared blood, along with a few partially destroyed body parts. Three kids, he reckoned, and all well beyond any kind of help.

  “No, nothing's wrong,” he said finally, not wanting to get himself into trouble. “I just wanted to check in with you, that's all. When I spoke to you last night, you seemed worried about something.”

  “I don't see how that's any of your concern,” Lord Pelham snapped. “Frankly, I'd have thought you might know better than to start phoning me up at all hours of the morning. A man has to sleep, Walter! You've got a job to do. If you have time to place foolish phone calls, perhaps I should consider whether I'm paying you too much!”

  “Speak to you soon, Your Lordship,” Walter said with a heavy sigh. “Sleep well.”

  With that, he cut the call before Lord Pelham could say anything in response. He stared at his phone for a moment, just in case he received a call back, and then he got to his feet and turned to look at the house.

  Everything looked fined.

  From the outside, this particular house – like the others nearby – looked perfectly ordinary. There was nothing to suggest that there was something hidden within, that the house functioned more like a helmet placed on the head of a buried giant. Deep down, however, Walter felt a sliver of shame at the realization that – after all these years – the giants had claimed more victims. That wasn't how things were supposed to go. The giants were supposed to be kept sedated and fed, and the alarms were supposed to make sure that nobody got into the houses undetected. Walter didn't know quite how the alarms had failed, but he figured he'd have to come up with a better system.

  All thought of quitting had left his thoughts. Instead, he was trying to work out how best to cover up the tragedy that had occurred overnight. And deep down, he knew that quitting had never been an option, not really. It had been an idle threat at most. So long as there were idiots in the world, people who were willing to ignore the signs and warnings, then there'd be a need for men like Frank. And his children. And their children. And their children's children. This was just what his family was destined to do.

  Turning, he began to walk over to the abandoned van. As he did so, he brought up Frank's number on his phone.

  “It's me,” he said as soon as he heard Frank picking up on the other end of the line. “Everything's fine with the truck, but I have another job for you. Remember how we talked about maybe one day needing to do one another a favor? I've got a van I need taken care of. No-one can ever be allowed to trace it to this area. I need it scrapped and melted down. I need it gone. Can you do that for me?”

  Behind him, the house stood silent. Unless, however, anyone ventured closer, in which case they might hear a faint purring sound coming from deep inside. Purring, or perhaps snoring, as the captive giants of Pelham continued their slumber.

  The Pier

  I

  A more desolate scene, I can't imagine.

  Sitting in the little booth at the entrance of the pier, I stare out at the dark street. The pub opposite closed about an hour ago, at eleven, and the lights were switched off a few minutes ago, all except a faint glow in one of the back rooms. There are flats above the various restaurants and shops, but all those lights are off as well. A few alleyways run between the buildings, leading to the dark and empty car park, but there's no sign of life there, either. It's midnight on a cold Monday night, and there's not a soul to be seen anywhere. This is what the world would be like if everyone else suddenly died, and there was only me left.

  “Charlie.”

  Suddenly Frank steps into my view, staring at me through the booth's window.

  Startled, I lean back in the chair.

  “Caught you daydreaming, did I?” he asks. “Or whatever they call daydreaming when it's at night. Nightdreaming? Is that right?”

  “Absolutely not, Sir,” I reply, sitting up straight – just like Mum taught me – so that I make a good impression. I really don't want to lose this job on the first night. “I was just... surveying the area.”

  “You were, huh?”

  I swallow hard.

  “I was watching for any potential dangers.”

  “Sure,” he mutters, “whatever. The gates to the pier are locked, and there's nothing else for me to do here tonight. I've pottered about long enough, it's time for you to start your first night-shift alone.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “And don't call me Sir, Charlie. I've known you since you were a kid.”

  “Yes, Frank,” I reply, and I almost say Sir again, which would make me seem really dumb and over-eager.

  “You gonna be okay here 'til Marcy comes to relieve you at six?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “You remember the rules?”

  “I do.”

  He hesitates, as if h
e's still not sure.

  “You know who to call if there's trouble?”

  “The police.”

  “That's right. And use the local number, not 999. You want to get put through to Bob or Carly at station on London Road, not to someone in a call center halfway across the country.”

  “I know, Sir. I mean, I know, Frank.”

  He hesitates again. It's past time for him to leave, but he seems reluctant. I know Mum had to really work hard to persuade him to give me this job, and I know he still has his doubts. At the same time, I just want him to leave me alone here, so I can prove to him that I'm the right man. I mean, 99% of the job is just going to be about sitting here and making sure that no-one tries to break through the gate and go onto the pier in the middle of the night. And the gate's huge and heavy, so I don't see how anyone could get through anyway.

  I'm fairly relaxed about the whole thing. The only problem might be random drunks, but not on a Monday.

  “Okay,” Frank says, turning to go, “I'd better be getting home.”

  He stops, and after a moment I realize that he still seems worried about something. Is he really that unconvinced by me? Sure, I'm scrawny and inexperienced, but I'm eighteen years old and I figure I don't look completely uninspiring. Do I?

  “You know,” he says cautiously, “there's one more thing. I shouldn't even mention it, there's really no need, but just in case...”

  I wait, but he seems reluctant to continue.

  “This isn't going to come up,” he adds finally, stepping closer again, “but just in case it does...”

  I wait.

  After a moment, he steps to one side and looks toward the gate. I follow his gaze, but all I see are the thick, black metal bars and – beyond those – the unlit pier stretching out to the cafe and fishing area at the far end. During the day, the pier is usually fairly busy, but at night the lights are switched off and the benches are left empty. The only sound comes from waves hitting the pier's thick concrete legs.