He was no architecture expert! His best guess was Gothic! All he knew was that he wouldn’t be surprised to see the silhouette of Norman Bates’ mother, framed in the grimy attic window, gently rocking back and forth. The single, ancient oak tree, occupying what was once the front garden, cast eerie shadows onto the crumbling, west-facing frontage courtesy of the early spring sun nose-diving toward the horizon. He shivered as he imagined the horrors that could be hidden behind the boarded ground floor windows and the filthy panes of the upper floors. Pulling his coat tightly around himself he walked quickly down the hill toward his waiting car.
From the relatively safe distance of the car, Will chuckled to himself, slightly embarrassed at his irrational fear of the place. It was a house! An old, abandoned house! Nothing more! So why, since the day he’d arrived in the area, were his eyes drawn to it every time he passed on his way to and from work? Why had he felt compelled to climb the grassy slope to take a closer look despite that gnawing feeling that he should stay away from the place? Whatever it was he decided he wasn’t planning on getting too close again. Irrational maybe! But why scare yourself unnecessarily?
“Was that your car parked at the bottom of Collier’s Hill last night?”
“What if it was?” Will instantly regretted the sharpness of his response. It was an innocent enough question and Sally was only being friendly, making polite conversation. He flashed an apologetic grin.
“Sorry Sal, I’m not sleeping too well at the minute. New surroundings and all that! You know what it’s like? I just stopped for a bit of fresh air on the way home.”
“No problem! It must be tough for you. New job, new town, new flat! Leaving your friends and family! It can’t be easy.”
Will shrugged, not wanting to get into a conversation about his past, not that there was much to get into. No family! No friends to speak of! Moving halfway across the country hadn’t been too difficult a decision.
“You want to stay away from that Collier House though”, Sally continued, “We always said it was haunted when we were kids.
“Haunted? Yeah right!” Will’s attempt to appear nonchalant didn’t fool Sally.
“Well no one ever saw an actual ghost…”
“Well there you are then, just daft kids stories.”
Will’s apparent discomfort seemed to spur Sally on. “Nobody ever saw an actual ghost, as such, but Dave Johnson swore blind he was up there once and the door had been left slightly open. So he had a look in!” The last sentence was laden with doom.
“And…” Will was on the edge of his seat now.
“Nothing really,” Sally shrugged, the usual lightness returning to her tone. “He said it was too dark to see anything. He said it was so dark it was almost solid. Didn’t dare go in though! It scared him enough that he went missing for two days. They were getting really worried about him back at the kid’s home. Although, knowing Dave it probably never even happened. Probably just an excuse for a couple of days of freedom! He was what’s known as a bit of a character was Dave. Not seen him in years! Fancy a coffee?”
As Sally headed toward the kitchen area, no doubt wondering what Dave was up to these days, Will decided he would be putting his foot down a little harder than usual as he passed Colliers Hill on the way home.
It was much later than usual, and already pitch-black, when Will approached the bend which, at a more reasonable hour, would normally bring the Collier house into view. He had spent the journey home cursing his decision to take on the role of out of hours support. “Give it a go Will”, they said. “The extra cash will come in handy”, they said. “I’ve been doing it for years and I’ve never had a call”, they said. It was typical of his luck that in his first week he got the call. At least he was still in the office car park when it came so the dash back to his desk was a short one. Now he was forced to traverse the country roads homeward in almost total darkness determined never again to volunteer for anything.
As he rounded the bend which skirted the lower reaches of Collier’s Hill his eyes were drawn away from the narrow beams of his headlights by something at the extreme right-hand periphery of his vision. He could have sworn he had seen a pin-prick of light somewhere roughly equidistant between the road and the Collier house but when he focussed on it, it was gone. It was probably nothing! Probably just the reflection of one of the dashboard lights in his side window. No! Wait! There it was again! This time he definitely saw it. This time it wasn’t alone. Cutting through the darkness were six tiny yellow dots. He counted them again. Definitely six! And they seemed to be moving, coming closer down the hill. A slight bump from his right-hand front wheel, as he hit a cats-eye, told him he had just strayed over the white line marking the centre of the road. He turned to face the road and immediately applied the brakes. He could do nothing as the darkly-clad figure was flipped up onto the bonnet of the Peugeot 207, rolled up the windscreen and landed, with a sickening crunch, several metres behind the now stationary car.
“Fucking hell!” The expletive was completely involuntary.
A sideways glance showed that the six dots were advancing far more rapidly, seemingly spurred on by the sound of the collision. Will opened his door and leaned out looking back at the stricken figure, its arms and legs at unnatural angles. He froze, struggling to make sense of what had just happened. The dots were much closer and now he could hear voices. Nothing coherent at first, but as they came nearer he began to make out snatches of sentences which led him to believe that behind the advancing torches, were some very pissed off people.
Some primeval urge for self-preservation snapped Will out of his stupor. He had a bad feeling about what might happen if he became acquainted with the torch bearers. Slamming the car door shut, he found first gear and roared off in the direction of home.
“Shit! Shit! Fuck! Shit! Fuck!” Each expletive was accompanied by Will pounding his forehead against the steering wheel. Fortunately the car park at his block of flats was sufficiently deserted to allow his outburst to go unnoticed. What the hell was he going to do? He had very probably just killed someone. Maybe he should drive straight to the police station and give himself up. Nobody could blame him. He was within the speed limit and the man was standing in the middle of a dark country road dressed in a black boiler-suit. But then again he’d driven off. That alone was a serious offence. What a bloody mess! He pounded his head against the steering wheel again, trying to remove the image of the man’s face which seemed to be permanently burnt onto his retina. That face! Will had never seen such fear on anyone’s face. A car heading straight for you at 50mph was probably more than enough to scare the living daylights out of anyone. But then it hit him! And it hit him hard! Will could visualise every little line and feature on that unfortunate man’s face as it contorted in abject terror. But that was when he’d been staring up the hill toward his pursuers. As he turned and saw Will’s car bearing down on him, there was only one emotion etched into his craggy features. Pure, unadulterated relief!
Will emerged from his manager’s office looking suitably chastened. He’d put down his late arrival and dishevelled appearance to a combination of a heavy night and a car that wouldn’t start necessitating the journey from hell on public transport. If he hadn’t had more pressing concerns on his mind he would have laughed at the impossible task the government had on their hands in convincing the masses to leave their cars at home. When the alternative to a twenty-five minute car journey was a two hour marathon involving a train journey sandwiched between two bus rides he couldn’t see it catching on.
“Bit of a session last night then was it?” Sally peered over the desk partition, a look of mock admonishment on her face.
“Leave it Sal”, was all Will could be bothered to counter with.
To Sally’s credit, with a ‘suit yourself’ shrug, she did exactly that. Will felt bad! He knew she was only joking, trying to make light of his dressing down, but what was he supposed to say?
“Actually Sally, I look like shit because I haven’t slept a wink all night. I haven’t slept a wink all night because I hit someone on the road near the Collier House and I’ve probably killed him. I’m late because I had to use public transport because my car looks like it’s had a run in with a chieftain tank, and lost! I’m half expecting the police to turn up on my door-step, or worse still the blokes who the poor bastard was so terrified of he looked like he was over the moon at being smashed to bits by a careless driver!” Under the circumstances it was probably best to remain silent on the subject and let everyone fill in the blanks for themselves.
Settled into his train seat (now there was a stroke of luck!) Will manically checked the headline accompanying every story on every page of the evening paper. Nothing! Another, more leisurely perusal confirmed his initial assessment. It was beginning to look like he’d got away with it. The huge, crushing weight that had encumbered him throughout the seemingly interminable day began to lighten as the city landscape gave way to the sparsely populated greenbelt. But just as the clouds were lifting a disturbing thought pushed its way into the foreground. Surely, if the accident had been reported to the police the local press would have known about it! Why, then, was the local evening paper full of nothing more than the usual dodgy councillors and local charity fundraising heroes? Something wasn’t right. He needed to think. And in order to think he needed sleep. His mind raced. Hardly the best preparation for a good night’s sleep! As he left the train station he popped into the small convenience store immediately opposite his bus stop intent on getting some sleep even if it meant buying it in bottle format.
This was definitely the right place. The flimsy attempt to hide the damage to the front end with an old sheet had probably drawn more attention to the car than if it had just been left uncovered. The lock on the communal front entrance to the flats had provided little resistance, the lock on the door to the flat even less. Moving silently through the small entrance hall they quickly located the bedroom. Detecting no sounds that would indicate the occupant was awake they opened the bedroom door and silently slipped inside. The deep, even breathing and the empty vodka bottle on the bedside table indicated this was going to be much easier than they could have possibly hoped.
Will’s brain, battered by far too much vodka the previous evening, struggled to assimilate the information being received from his dulled senses. As he struggled to open his eyes the hard chair beneath his backside and the feel of cold wood on his right cheek suggested he had passed out at the kitchen table. He could have sworn he had made it to bed! With an enormous effort he prised open his eyelids and was confronted, not with the warming, cheery patterned wallpaper of his small kitchen, but with a cold, brick wall in a less than fetching battleship grey.
“Ah, Mr Anderson, you’ve finally decided to join us!”
Will sat bolt upright, the harsh edge to the voice seeming to clear his head instantly.
“You are Mr William Anderson of Flat 314, Beaufort House?”
“Err, yes”, Will hesitated, taking in the features of the man sitting on the opposite side of the small wooden table.
“You didn’t really think you could get away with it did you?” This time the voice came from immediately behind Will. He span round quickly, the sudden movement serving to remind him he had consumed a bottle of vodka just a few hours earlier.
“Erm I, well I suppose…” Will didn’t know what to say. His second inquisitor, an almost identical copy of his first, was shaking his head. The expression on his face was that of a mother, mildly disappointed with an errant child.
“It just isn’t on Mr Anderson.” This time it was inquisitor number one again. “I don’t know how people behave back where you come from but we really can’t allow this sort of thing. We really can’t!” He looked toward his colleague. “I suppose this is what happens when a boy is brought up by the state. No father figure to instil discipline, a sense of right and wrong.”
“I was going to come to speak to you, give myself up but…” Will’s attempted justification trailed off as he realised he really did have no excuse.
“Come to speak to us?” It was number two’s turn.
“Well, yes. There’s a police station near work. I was going to call in but, you know, I got scared”.
Number two moved from behind Will to face him over the table, side by side with number one.
“Oh dear, Mr Anderson”, he said, his voice betraying a hint of amusement. “I’m afraid Mr Archer and I have got nothing to do with the police. Have we Mr Archer?”
“Absolutely nothing Mr Stanton!”
Will’s blood ran cold as he considered the implications of this revelation. Who the hell were these people? Where was he? And just exactly what did they want with him if they weren’t the police.
“We need to consider our next move”. Archer seemed to be taking charge. “I suggest you get some rest Mr Anderson,” he motioned toward an old mattress on the floor in the corner of the room, “you’re probably going to need it!”
Will watched, nervously, as they opened the door and squeezed their imposing frames through the narrow exit. His heart almost stopped! Just beyond the threshold of the door, they seemed to be consumed by an inky, solid blackness as the door slammed shut. To the soundtrack of receding footsteps his bowels turned to water as, for the first time since regaining consciousness, he looked down at himself. He was dressed in a black boiler suit!
With a hand raised to shade his eyes from the glare of the setting sun Stanton gave Archer a questioning look.
“So what do we do with him?” he asked, already knowing the response.
Not even the merest flicker of remorse crossed Archer’s granite features as he consigned Will to his fate.
“Well! He killed Mr Johnson! So he can replace Mr Johnson!”
Stanton, nodded silently, turned and headed back through the door, immediately enveloped in the thick, heavy blackness as he crossed the threshold. Archer stepped down from the porch, wheeling round to take in the imposing edifice.
He was no architecture expert! His best guess was Gothic! All he knew was that he wouldn’t be surprised to see the silhouette of Norman Bates’ mother, framed in the grimy attic window, gently rocking back and forth. The single, ancient oak tree, occupying what was once the front garden, cast eerie shadows onto the crumbling, west-facing frontage courtesy of the early spring sun nose-diving toward the horizon. He shivered as he pictured the horrors that were hidden behind the boarded ground floor windows and the filthy panes of the upper floors. Pulling his coat tightly around himself he walked quickly down the hill toward his waiting car.
THE END